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<0ngltsl) Jlten of Ccttcrs 

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY 



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SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 



BY 



J. A. SYMONDS 



AUTHOR OF 

" "studies op the greek poets 1 



SKETCH OP SHELLEY 

"SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN SOUTHERN EUROPE" 




NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1887 




<& 



ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. 

Edited by John Morley. 



Johnson Leslie Stephen. 

Gibbon J. C. Morison. 

Scott R. H. Hutton. 

Shelley J. A. Symonds. 

Hume T. H. Huxley. 

Goldsmith William Black. 

Defoe William Minto. 

Burns J. C. Shairp. 

Spenser R. W. Church. 

Thackeray Anthony Trollope. 

Burke John Morley. 

Milton Mark Pattison. 

Hawthorne Henry James, Jr. 

Southey E. Dowden. 

Chaucer A. W. Ward. 

Bunyan J. A. Froude. 

Cowper Goldwin Smith. 

Pope Leslie Stephen. 

Sir Philip Sidney 



| Byron John Nichol. 

1 Locke Thomas Fowler. 

i Wordsworth F. Myers. 

Dryden G. Saintsbury. 

Landor Sidney Colvin. 

De Quincey David Masson. 

Lamb Alfred Ainger. 

1 Bentley R. C. Jebb. 

| Dickens A. W. Ward. 

Gray E. W. Gosse. 

Swift Leslie Stephen. 

Sterne H. D. Traill. 

i Macaulay J. Cotter Morison. 

I Fielding Austin Dobson. 

I Sheridan Mrs. Oliphant. 

Addison W. J. Courthope. 

Bacon R. W. Church. 

I Coleridge H. D. Traill. 

, J. A. Symonds. 



i2mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

iW Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any pari 
of the United States, on receipt of the price. 



Ik 

54 






PREFACE. 

The chief documents upon which a life of Sir Philip 
Sidney must be grounded are, at present, his own works 
in prose and verse, Collins' Sidney Papers (2 vols., 1745), 
Sir Henry Sidney's Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham 
{Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Nos. 9-31), Languet's 
Latin Letters (Edinburgh, 1776), Pears' Correspondence of 
Languet and Philip Sidney (London, 1845), Fulke Grev- 
ille's so-called Life of Sidney (1652), the anonymous 
" Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney," prefixed to old 
editions of the Arcadia, and a considerable mass of memo- 
rial writings in prose and verse illustrative of his career. 
In addition to these sources, which may be called original, 
we possess a series of modern biographies, each of which 
deserves mention. These, in their chronological order, 
are: Dr. Zouch's (1809), Mr. William Gray's (1829), an 
anonymous Life and Times of Sir Philip Sidney (Boston, 
1859), Mr. Fox Bourne's (1862), and Mr. Julius Lloyd's 
(later in 1862). With the American Life I am not ac- 
quainted ; but the two last require to be particularly no- 
ticed. Mr. Fox Bourne's Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney 
combines a careful study of its main subject with an able 
review of the times. The author's industrious researches 
in State Papers and other MS. collections brought many 
new facts to light, This book is one upon which all later 



vi PREFACE. 

handlings of the subject will be based, and his deep in- 
debtedness to which every subsequent biographer of Sid- 
ney must recognise. Mr. Lloyd's Life of Sir Philip Sidney 
appearing in the same year as Mr. Fox Bourne's, is slighter 
in substance. It has its own value as a critical and con- 
scientious study of Sidney under several aspects ; and in 
one or two particulars it supplements or corrects the more 
considerable work of Mr. Bourne. For Sidney's writings 
Professor Arber's reprint of the Defence of Poesy, and 
Dr. Grosart's edition of the poems in two volumes (The 
Fuller Worthies' Library, 1873), will be found indispen- 
sable. 

In composing this sketch I have freely availed myself 
of all that has been published about Sidney. It has been 
my object to present the ascertained facts of his brief life, 
and my own opinions regarding his character and literary 
works, in as succinct a form as I found possible. 

Badenweiler, May 11, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. page 

Lineage, Birth, and Boyhood 1 

CHAPTER II. 
Foreign Travel 19 

CHAPTER III. 
Entrance into Court-Life and Embassy 32 

CHAPTER IV. 
The French Match and "The Arcadia" 59 

CHAPTER V. 
Life at Court again, and Marriage 87 

CHAPTER VI. 

"ASTROPHEL AND STELLA" 100 

CHAPTER VII. 
"The Defence of Poesy" 145 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Last Years and Death 160 



SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 

CHAPTER I. 

LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 

Shelley, in his memorial poem on the death of Keats, 
named Sir Philip Sidney among " the inheritors of unful- 
filled renown." If this praise be applicable to Chatterton 
and Keats, it is certainly, though in a less degree perhaps, 
true also of Sidney. His best friend and interpreter put 
on record that " the youth, life, and fortune of this gentle- 
man were, indeed, but sparks of extraordinary greatness in 
him, which, for want of clear vent, lay concealed, and, in a 
manner, smothered up." The real difficulty of painting an 
adequate portrait of Sidney at the present time is that his 
renown transcends his actual achievement. Neither his> 
poetry nor his prose, nor what is known about his action, 
quite explains the singular celebrity which he enjoyed in 
his own life, and the fame which has attended his memory 
with almost undimmed lustre through three centuries. In 
an age remarkable for the great deeds of its heroes, no less 
than for the splendour of its literature, he won and retained 
a homage which was paid to none of his contemporaries. 
All classes concurred in worshipping that marvellous youth, 
1* 



2 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

who displayed the choicest gifts of chivalry and scholar- 
ship, of bravery and prudence, of creative and deliberative 
genius, in the consummate harmony of a noble character. 
The English nation seemed instinctively to recognise in 
him the impersonation of its manifold ideals. He was 
beautiful, and of illustrious ancestry, — an accomplished 
courtier, complete in all the exercises of a cavalier. He 
was a student, possessed of the new learning which Italy 
had recently bequeathed to Europe. He was a poet and 
the " warbler of poetic prose," at a moment when the 
greater luminaries of the Elizabethan period had scarcely 
risen above the horizon. Yet his beauty did not betray 
him into levity or wantonness; his noble blood bred in 
him neither pride nor presumption. Courtly habits failed 
to corrupt his rectitude of conduct, or to impair the can- 
dour of his utterance. The erudition of the Renaissance 
left his Protestant simplicity and Christian faith untouched. 
Literary success made him neither jealous nor conceited ; 
and as the patron and friend of poets, he was even more 
eminent than as a writer. These varied qualities were so 
finely blent in his amiable nature that, when Wotton called 
him " the very essence of congruity," he hit upon the hap- 
piest phrase for describing Sidney's charm. 

The man, in fact, was greater than his words and actions. 
His whole life was "a true poem, a composition, and pat- 
tern of the best and honourablest things ;" and the fascina- 
tion which he exerted over all who came in contact with 
him — a fascination which extended to those who only 
knew him by report — must now, in part at least, be taken 
upon trust. We cannot hope to present such a picture of 
him as shall wholly justify his fame. Personalities so 
unique as Sidney's exhale a perfume which evanesces when 
the lamp of life burns out. This the English nation felt 



i.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 3 

when they put on public mourning' for his death. They 
felt that they had lost in Sidney, not only one of their 
most hopeful gentlemen and bravest soldiers, but some- 
thing rare and beautiful in human life, which could not be 
recaptured, — which could not even be transmitted, save by 
hearsay, to a future age. The living Enphues of that era 
(so conscious of its aspirations as yet but partially attained, 
so apt to idealise its darlings) had perished — just when all 
men's eyes were turned with certainty of expectation on 
the coming splendours of his maturity. " The president 
of nobleness and chivalry " was dead. " That most heroic 
spirit, the heaven's pride, the glory of our days," had passed 
away like young Marcellus. Words failed the survivors to 
express their sense of the world's loss. This they could 
not utter, because there was something indescribable, in- 
calculable, in the influence his personality had exercised. 
We, then, who have to deal with meagre records and scanty 
written remains, must well weigh the sometimes almost in- 
coherent passion which emerges in the threnodies poured 
out upon his grave. In the grief of Spenser and of Cam- 
den, of Fuller and of Jonson, of Constable and Nash, of the 
Countess of Pembroke and Fulke Greville, as in a glass 
darkly, we perceive what magic spell it was that drew the 
men of his own time to love and adore Sidney. The truth 
is that Sidney, as we now can know him from his deeds 
and words, is not an eminently engaging or profoundly in- 
teresting personage. But, in the mirror of contemporary 
minds, he shines with a pure lustre, which the students of 
his brief biography must always feel to be surrounding 
him. 

Society, in the sixteenth century, bestowed much in- 
genuity upon the invention of appropriate mottoes and 
significant emblems. When, therefore, we read that Sir 



4 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Philip Sidney inscribed his shield with these words Vix ea 
nostra voco (" These things I hardly call our own"), we 
may take it for a sign that he attached no undue value to 
noble birth ; and, indeed, he makes one of the most re- 
spectable persons in his Arcadia exclaim : " I am no her- 
ald to enquire of men's pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I 
know their virtues." This might justify his biographers 
in silence regarding his ancestry, were it not that his con- 
nections, both on the father's and the mother's side, were 
all-important in determining the tenor of his life. 

The first Sidney of whom we hear anything came into 
England with Henry II., and held the office of Chamber- 
lain to that king. His descendant, Nicholas Sidney, mar- 
ried a daughter of Sir William Brandon and aunt of 
Charles, Duke of Suffolk. Their son, Sir William Sidney, 
played an important part during the reign of Henry VIII. ; 
he served in the French wars, and commanded the right 
wing of the English army at Flodden. To him w r as given 
the manor of Penshurst in Kent, which has remained in 
the possession of the Sidneys and their present representa- 
tives. On his death in 1554 he left one son and four 
daughters. The eldest of these daughters was ancestress 
of Lord Bolingbroke. From the marriage of the second 
to Sir James Harrington descended, by female alliances, 
the great house of Montagu and the families of North and 
Noel. Through the marriage of the third with Sir Will- 
iam Fitz-William, Lord Byron laid claim to a drop of 
Sidney blood. The fourth, who was the wife of Thomas 
Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, dying childless, founded Sidney 
Sussex College at Cambridge. With the only son, Sir 
Henry Sidney (b. 1529-89), we shall have much to do in 
the present biography. It is enough now to mention that 
Henry VIII. chose him for bedfellow and companion to 



i.] ' LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 5 

his only son. " I was, by that most famous king," he 
writes, " put to his sweet son, Prince Edward, my most 
dear master, prince, and sovereign ; my near kinswoman 
being his only nurse, my father being his chamberlain, my 
mother his governess, my aunt in such place as among 
meaner personages is called a dry nurse ; for, from the time 
he left sucking, she continually lay in bed with him, so 
long as he remained in woman's government. As the 
prince grew in years and discretion so grew I in favour and 
liking of him." A portion of Hollingshed's Chronicle, 
contributed by Edward Molineux, long time Sir Henry 
Sidney's secretary, confirms this statement. " This right 
famous, renowned, worthy, virtuous, and heroical knight, 
by father and mother very nobly descended, was from his 
infancy bred and brought up in the prince's court and in 
nearness to his person, used familiarly even as a compan- 
ion." Nothing but Edward VI.'s untimely death prevent- 
ed Sir Henry Sidney from rising to high dignity and pow- 
er in the realm. It was in his arms that the king expired 
in 1553 at Greenwich. 

One year before this event Sir Henry had married the 
Lady Mary Dudley, daughter of Edmund, Viscount De l'Isle 
and Duke of Northumberland. The Dudleys were them- 
selves of noble extraction, though one of their ancestors 
had perished ignobly on the scaffold. Edmund Dudley, 
grandson of John Lord Dudley, K.G., joined with Sir Rich- 
ard Empson in those extortions which disgraced the last 
years of Henry VII.'s reign, and both were executed in the 
second year of his successor. His son, Sir John Dudley, 
was afterwards relieved of the attainder, and restored to 
those honours which he claimed from his mother. His 
mother, Elizabeth Grey, was heiress of a very ancient house, 
whose baronies and titles had passed by an almost unex- 



6 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

ampled series of female successions. The first founder of 
the family of De l'lsle appears in history during the reign 
of King John. The last baron of the male blood died in 
the reign of Richard IL, leaving an heiress, who was mar- 
ried to Thomas Lord Berkeley. Their daughter and sole 
heiress married Richard, Earl of Warwick, and also left an 
only beiress, who married John Talbot, the great Earl of 
Shrewsbury. Her eldest son, John Talbot, Baron De l'lsle, 
created Viscount De l'lsle, left an only daughter, Elizabeth, 
who was wedded to Sir Edward Grey, created Baron and 
Viscount De l'lsle. It was the daughter and heiress of 
this marriage who gave birth to the ambitious and unfort- 
unate Duke of Northumberland. From these dry facts it 
will be seen that the descendants of Edmund Dudley were 
not only heirs and representatives of the ancient barony 
of De l'lsle, but that they also inherited the blood and 
arms of the illustrious houses of Berkeley, Beauchamp, 
Talbot, and Grey. When we further remember to what an 
eminence the Duke of Northumberland climbed, and how 
his son, the Earl of Leicester, succeeded in restoring the 
shattered fortunes of the family after that great prince's 
fall, we can understand why Sir Henry Sidney used the 
following language to his brother-in-law upon the occasion 
of Mary Sidney's betrothal to the Earl of Pembroke: — "I 
find to my exceeding great comfort the likelihood of a 
marriage between my Lord of Pembroke and my daugh- 
ter, which great honour to me, my mean lineage and kin, I 
attribute to my match in your noble house." Philip Sid- 
ney, too, when he was called to defend his uncle Leicester 
against certain libels, expressed his pride in the connection. 
" I am a Dudley in blood ; that Duke's daughter's son ; and 
do acknowledge, though in all truth I may justly affirm that 
I am by my father's side of ancient and always well-es- 



i.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 1 

teemed and well-matched gentry, — yet I do acknowledge, 
I say, that my chiefest honour is to be a Dudley." 

Philip was born at Penshurst on the 29th of November 
1554. At that epoch their alliance with the Dudleys 
seemed more likely to bring ruin on the Sidneys than new 
honours. It certainly made their home a house of mourn- 
ing. Lady Mary Sidney had recently lost her father and 
her brother Guilford on the scaffold. Another of her 
brothers, John, Earl of Warwick, after his release from the 
Tower, took refuge at Penshurst, and died there about a 
month before his nephew's birth. 1 Sir Henry's loyalty 
and prudence at this critical time saved the fortunes of his 
family. He retired to his country seat, taking no part in 
the Duke of Northumberland's ambitious schemes ; and 
though he was coldly greeted at Mary's Court, the queen 
confirmed him in the tenure of his offices and honours by a 
deed of 8th November 1554. She also freed his wife from 
participation in the attainder of her kinsfolk. Their eldest 
son was christened Philip in compliment to Mary's Spanish 
consort. It appears that Sir Henry Sidney subsequently 
gained his sovereign's confidence; for in this reign he was 
appointed Vice-Treasurer and Controller of the royal reve- 
nues in Ireland. 

Of Philip's birthplace Ben Jonson has bequeathed to us 
a description, animated with more of romantic enthusiasm 
than was common to his muse. 

" Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show 
Of touch 2 or marble, nor canst boast a row 

1 Duke of Northumberland, d. 22d August 1553 ; Lord Guilford 
Dudley and Lady Jane Grey, 12th February 1554 ; John Dudley, Earl 
of Warwick, 21st October 1554. 

2 Touch is a superlative sort of marble, the classic basanites. The 
reference to a lantern in the next line but one might pass for a proph- 
ecy of Walpole's too famous lantern at Houghton. 



8 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Of polished pillars or a roof of gold : 

Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told ; 

Or stair, or courts; but stand'st an ancient pile ; 

And these, grudged at, are reverenced the while. 

Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air, 

Of wood, of water ; therein art thou fair. 

Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport : 

Thy mount, to which thy dryads do resort, 

Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made, 

Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut shade ; 

That taller tree, which of a nut was set, 

At his great birth, where all the muses met ; 

There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names 

Of many a Sylvan taken with his flames ; 

And there the ruddy satyrs oft provoke 

The lighter fauns to reach thy lady's oak." 

The tree here commemorated by Jonson as having been 
planted at Sir Philip Sidney's birth, was cut down in 1768, 
not, however, before it had received additional fame from 
Edmund Waller. His Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea 
Sidney; and the poet was paying her court at Penshurst 
when he wrote these lines : 

" Go, boy, and carve this passion on the bark 
Of yonder tree, which stands the sacred mark 
Of noble Sidney's birth." 

Jonson expatiates long over the rural charms of Pens- 
hurst, which delighted him on many a summer's holiday. 
He celebrates the pastures by the river, the feeding-grounds 
of cattle, the well-stocked game preserves, the fish-ponds, 
and the deer-park, which supplied that hospitable board 
with all good things in season. 

" The painted partridge lies in every field, 
And for thy mess is willing to be killed ; 



L] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 9 

And if the high-swol'n Medway fail thy dish 
Thou hast the ponds that pay thee tribute fish, 
Fat aged carps that run into thy net, 
And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat, 
As loth the second draught or cast to stay, 
Officiously at first themselves betray." 

Next he turns to the gardens : — 

" Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, 
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours ; 
The early cherry, with the later plum, 
Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come ; 
The blushing apricot and woolly peach, 
Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach." 

The trellised walls remind him of the ancient habitation, 
which, though homely, is venerable, rearing itself among 
the humbler dwellings of the peasants, with patriarchal 
rather than despotic dignity. 

" And though thy walls be of the country stone, 
They're reared with no man's ruin, no man's groan ; 
There's none that dwell about them wish them down, 
But all come in, the farmer and the clown, 
And no one empty-handed to salute 
Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. 
Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, 
Some nuts, some apples ; some that think they make 
The better cheeses, bring them ; or else send 
By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend 
This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear 
An emblem of themselves in plum or pear." 

This poem, composed in the days when Philip's brother 
Sir Robert Sidney, was master of Penshurst, presents so 
charming a picture of the old-world home in which Philip 
was born, and where he passed his boyhood, that I have 
been fain to linger over it. 



10 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Sir Henry Sidney was sent to Ireland in 1556 as Vice- 
Treasurer and General Governor of the royal revenues in 
that kingdom. He distinguished himself, soon after his 
arrival, by repelling an invasion of the Scots in Ulster, and 
killing James MacConnel, one of their leaders, with his own 
hand. Next year he was nominated Lord Justice of Ire- 
land ; and, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, he obtained 
the confirmation of his offices. In 1558 the queen nomi- 
nated him Lord President of Wales, which dignity he held 
during the rest of his life. It does not exactly appear 
when he first took the rank of Lord Deputy of Ireland, 
a title corresponding to that of Lord Lieutenant. But 
throughout the first seven years of Elizabeth's reign he dis- 
charged functions there which were equivalent to the su- 
preme command. In 1564 he received the honour of the 
Garter, being installed in the same election with King- 
Charles IX. of France. On this occasion he was styled 
" The thrice valiant Knight, Deputy of the Realm of Ire- 
land, and President of the Council of Wales." Next year 
he was again despatched to Ireland with the full title and 
authority of Lord Deputy. 

The administration of Wales obliged Sir Henry Sidney 
to reside frequently at Ludlow Castle, and this was the rea- 
son which determined him to send Philip to school at 
Shrewsbury. Being the emporium of English commerce 
with North Wales and Ireland, and the centre of a thriving 
wool-trade, Shrewsbury had then become a city of impor- 
tance. The burgesses established there a public school, 
which flourished under the able direction of Thomas Ash- 
ton. From a passage in Ben Jonson's prose works it is 
clear that the advantages of public-school education were 
well appreciated at that time in England. Writing to a 
nobleman, who asked him how he might best train up his 



i.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 11 

sons, he says : " I wish them sent to the best school, and a 
public. They are in more danger in your own family 
among ill servants than amongst a thousand boys, however 
immodest. To breed them at home is to breed them in a 
shade, whereas in a school they have the light and heat of 
the sun. They are used and accustomed to things and 
men. When they come forth into the commonwealth, they 
find nothing new or to seek. They have made their friend- 
ships and aids, some to last till their age." One such 
friend, whose loving help was given to Sidney till death 
parted them, entered Shrewsbury school together with him 
on the 19th of November 1574. This was Fulke Greville, 
a distant relative, and a boy of exactly the same age. To 
the sincere attachment which sprang up between them, and 
strengthened with their growing age, we owe our most val- 
uable information regarding Philip's character and opinions. 
Fulke Greville survived his friend, became Lord Brooke, 
and when he died in 1628 the words " Friend to Philip 
Sidney " were inscribed upon his tomb. From the short 
biography of his friend, prefixed to a collection of his own 
works, which was dedicated to Sidney's memory, we obtain 
a glimpse of the boy while yet at school : — 

" Of his youth I will report no other wonder but this, that though 
I lived with him, and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him 
other than a man ; with such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar 
gravity as carried grace and reverence above greater years. His talk 
ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind. So 
as even his teachers found something to observe and learn above that 
which they had usually read or taught. Which eminence, by nature 
and industry, made his worthy father style Sir Philip in my hearing 
(though I unseen) Lumen families suce." 

According to our present notions, we do not consider it al- 
together well if a boy between the ages of ten and fifteen 



12 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

wins praise for exceptional gravity. Yet Fulke Greville 
does not call Philip bookish ; and we have abundant evi- 
dence that, while he was early heedful of nourishing* his 
mind, he showed no less eagerness to train his body in such 
exercises as might be serviceable to a gentleman, and use- 
ful to a soldier. Nevertheless, his friend's admiring eulogy 
of the lad's deportment indicates what, to the end, remained 
somewhat chilling in his nature — a certain stiffness, want 
of impulse — want, perhaps, of salutary humour. He could 
not take the world lightly — could not act, except in rare 
moments of anger, without reflection. Such a character is 
admirable; and youths at our public schools, who remain 
overgrown boys in their games until they verge on twenty, 
might well take a leaf from Sidney's book. But we can- 
not refrain from thinking that just a touch of recklessness 
would have made him more attractive. We must, how- 
ever, remember that he was no child of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. He belonged to the age of Burleigh and of Bacon, 
and the circumstances of his birth forced on him precocity 
in prudence. Being the heir of Sir Henry Sidney and 
Lady Mary Dudley, he could not but be early conscious of 
the serious difficulties which perplexed his parents. Had 
he not been also conscious of a calling to high things, he 
would have derogated from his illustrious lineao-e. His 
gravity, then, befitted his blood and position in that still 
feudal epoch, his father's eminent but insecure station, and 
the tragic fate of his maternal relatives. 

A letter written by Sir Henry Sidney to his son, while 
still at school in Shrewsbury, may here be cited. It helps 
to show why Philip, even as a boy, was earnest. Sympa- 
thetic to his parents, bearing them sincere love, and owing 
them filial obedience, he doubtless read with veneration, 
and observed with loyalty, the words of wisdom — wiser 



l] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 13 

than those with which Polonius took farewell of Laertes 
— dictated for him by the upright and valiant man whom 
he called father. Long- as it is, I shall give it in full ; for 
nothing could better bring before our eyes the ideal of 
conduct which then ruled English gentlefolk : — 

" I have received two letters from you, one written in Latin, the 
other in French ; which I take in good part, and wish you to exercise 
that practice of learning often ; for that will stand you in most stead 
in that profession of life that you are born to live in. And since this 
is my first letter that ever I did write to you, I will not that it be all 
empty of some advices, which my natural care for you provoketh me 
to wish you to follow, as documents to you in this your tender age. 
Let your first action be the lifting up of your mind to Almighty God 
by hearty prayer ; and feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer, 
with continual meditation and thinking of Him to whom you pray and 
of the matter for which you pray. And use this as an ordinary act, 
and at an ordinary hour, whereby the time itself shall put you in re- 
membrance to do that which you are accustomed to do in that time. 
Apply your study to such hours as your discreet master doth assign 
you, earnestly ; and the time I know he will so limit as shall be both 
sufficient for your learning and safe for your health. And mark the 
sense and the matter of that you read, as well as the words. So shall 
you both enrich your tongue with words and your wit with matter ; 
and judgment will grow as years groweth in you. Be humble and 
obedient to your master, for unless you frame yourself to obey others, 
yea, and feel in yourself what obedience is, you shall never be able to 
teach others how to obey you. Be courteous of gesture and affable to 
all men, with diversity of reverence according to the dignity of the 
person : there is nothing that winneth so much with so little cost. 
Use moderate diet, so as after your meal you may find your wit fresher 
and not duller, and your body more lively and not more heavy. Sel- 
dom drink wine, and yet sometimes do, lest being enforced to drink 
upon the sudden you should find yourself inflamed. Use exercise of 
body, yet such as is without peril of your joints or bones ; it will in- 
crease your force and enlarge your breath. Delight to be cleanly, as 
well in all parts of your body as in your garments : it shall make you 
grateful in each company, and otherwise loathsome. Give yourself to 



H SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

be merry, for you degenerate from your father if you find not your- 
self most able in wit and body and to do anything when you be most 
merry; but let your mirth be ever void of all scurrility and biting 
words to any man, for a wound given by a word is oftentimes harder 
to be cured than that which is given with the sword. Be you rather 
a hearer and bearer away of other men's talk than a beginner and 
procurer of speech ; otherwise you shall be counted to delight to hear 
yourself speak. If you hear a wise sentence or an apt phrase commit 
it to your memory with respect of the circumstance when you shall 
speak it. Let never oath be heard to come out of your mouth nor 
word of ribaldry ; detest it in others ; so shall custom make to your- 
self a law against it in yourself. Be modest in each assembly ; and 
rather be rebuked of light fellows for maiden-like shamefastness than 
of your sad friends for pert boldness. Think upon every word that 
you will speak before you utter it, and remember how nature hath 
ramparted up, as it were, the tongue with teeth, lips, yea, and hair 
without the lips, and all betokening reins or bridles for the loose use 
of that member. Above all things, tell no untruth ; no, not in trifles : 
the custom of it is naughty. And let it not satisfy you that, for a 
time, the hearers take it for truth ; for after it will be known as it is, 
to your shame ; for there cannot be a greater reproach to a gentleman 
than to be accounted a liar. Study and endeavour yourself to be virt- 
uously occupied, so shall you make such a habit of well-doing in you 
that you shall not know how to do evil, though you would. Remem- 
ber, my son, the noble blood you are descended of, by your mother's 
side ; and think that only by virtuous life and good action you may 
be an ornament to that illustrious family, and otherwise, through vice 
and sloth you shall be counted labes generis, one of the greatest curses 
that can happen to man. Well, my little Philip, this is enough for 
me, and too much, I fear, for you. Bat if I shall find that this light 
meal of digestion nourisheth anything in the weak stomach of your 
capacity, I will, as I find the same grow stronger, feed it with tougher 
food.— Your loving father, so long as you live in the fear of God, 

" H. Sidney." 

To this epistle Lady Mary Sidney added a postscript, 
which, if it is less correct in style and weighty with wise 
counsel, interests us by its warm and motherly affection. 



i.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 15 

" Your noble and careful father hath taken pains (with his own 
hand) to give you in this his letter so wise, so learned, and most req- 
uisite precepts for you to follow with a diligent and humble thank- 
ful mind, as I will not withdraw your eyes from beholding and rever- 
ent honouring the same, — no, not so long time as to read any letter 
from me ; and therefore at this time I will write no other letter than 
this : and hereby I first bless you with my desire to God to plant in 
you His grace, and secondarily warn you to have always before the eyes 
of your mind those excellent counsels of my lord, your dear father, 
and that you fail not continually once in four or five days to read 
them over. And for a final leave-taking for this time, see that you 
Bhow yourself a loving obedient scholar to your good master, and that 
my lord and I may hear that you profit so in your learning as there- 
by you may increase our loving care of you, and deserve at his hands 
the continuance of his great joys, to have him often witness with his 
own hand the hope he hath in your well-doing. 

" Farewell, my little Philip, and once again the Lord bless you. — 
Your loving mother, Mary Sidney." 



In those days boys did not wait till they were grown 
men before they went to college. Sidney left Shrewsbury 
in 1568, and began residence at Christ Church. He was 
still in his fourteenth year. There he stayed until some 
time in 1571, when he quitted Oxford without having tak- 
en a degree. In this omission there was nothing singular. 
His quality rendered bachelorship or mastership of arts in- 
different to him ; and academical habits were then far freer 
than in our times. That he studied diligently is, however, 
certain. The unknown writer named Philophilippus, who 
prefixed a short essay on "The Life and Death of Sir 
Philip Sidney " to the Arcadia, speaks thus in his quaint 
language of the years spent at Oxford : " Here an excellent 
stock met with the choicest grafts; nor could his tutors 
pour in so fast as he was ready to receive." The Dean of 
Christ Church, Dr. Thomas Thornton, had it afterwards en- 



16 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

graved upon his own tomb at Ledbury that he had been 
the preceptor of "Philip Sidney, that most noble Knight." 
We possess few particulars which throw any light upon 
Sidney's academical career. There is some reason, how- 
ever, to believe that liberal learning at this period flourished 
less upon the banks of the Isis than at Cambridge and in 
our public schools. Bruno, in his account of a visit to 
Oxford ten years later, introduces us to a set of pompous 
pedants, steeped in mediaeval scholasticism and heavy with 
the indolence of fat fellowships. Here, however, Sidney 
made the second great friendship of his youth. It was 
with Edward Dyer, a man of quality and parts, who claims 
distinction as an English poet principally by one faultless 
line: "My mind to me a kingdom is." Sir Edward Dyer 
and Sir Fulke Greville lived in bonds of closest affection 
with Sir Philip Sidney through his life, and walked togeth- 
er as pall-bearers at his funeral. That was an age in which 
friendship easily assumed the accents of passionate love. 
I may use this occasion to quote verses which Sidney 
wrote at a later period regarding his two comrades. He 
had recently returned from Wilton to the Court, and found 
there both Greville and Dyer. 

" My two and I be met, 
A blessed happy trinity, 

As three most jointly set 
In firmest bond of unity. 

Join hearts and hands, so let it be ; 

Make but one mind in bodies three. 

" Welcome my two to me, 
The number best beloved ; 

Within the heart you be 
In friendship unremoved. 

Join hearts and hands, so let it be ; 

Make but one mind in bodies three." 



L] lineage, bikth, and boyhood. 11 

And again, when tired of the Court, and sighing for the 
country, he offers up a prayer to Pan, according to the pas- 
toral fashion of the age, in which his two heart's brothers 
are remembered : — 

" Only for my two loves' sake, 
In whose love I pleasure take ; 
Only two do me delight 
With their ever-pleasing sight ; 
Of all men to thee retaining 
Graut me with those two remaining." 

As poetry these pieces are scarcely worth citation. But 
they agreeably illustrate their author's capacity for friend- 
ship. 

It was also from Oxford that Sidney sent the first letter 
still extant in his writing. This is a somewhat laboured 
Latin epistle to his uncle Leicester. Elizabeth's favourite 
had taken his nephew under special protection. It was 
indeed commonly accepted for certain that, failing legiti- 
mate issue, the Earl intended to mate Philip his heir. This 
expectation helps us to understand the singular respect 
paid him through these years of early manhood. Sir Hen- 
ry Sidney was far from being a rich man. His duties in 
Ireland and Wales removed him from the circle of the 
Court, and his bluntness of speech made him unacceptable 
to the queen. Philip therefore owed more of his prestige 
to his uncle than to his father. At this time Leicester ap- 
pears to have been negotiating a marriage contract between 
the lad at Christ Church and Anne Cecil, daughter of Lord 
Burleigh. Articles had been drawn up. But the matter 
fell through ; the powerful Secretary of State judging that 
he could make a better match for his girl than with the 
son of a needy knight, whose expectations of succeeding to 
Leicester's estate were problematical. Politely but plainly 
2 



18 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap.i. 

he extricated himself from the engagement, and bestowed 
Anne upon Edward de Vere, the dissolute and brutal Earl 
of Oxford. This passage in the life of Sidney is insignifi- 
cant. That the boy of sixteen could have entertained any 
strong feeling for his projected bride will hardly admit of 
belief. One of his biographers, however, notices that about 
the time when the matter terminated in Anne's betrothal 
to the Earl of Oxford, Philip fell into bad health. Leices- 
ter had to obtain permission for him to eat flesh in Lent 
from no less a personage than Doctor Parker, the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. 



CHAPTER II. 

FOREIGN TRAVEL. 

It is not the business of Sir Philip Sidney's biographer to 
discuss Elizabeth's Irish policy at length. Yet his father's 
position as governor of the island renders some allusion to 
those affairs indispensable. Sir Henry Sidney was a brave 
and eminently honest man, the sturdy servant of his sov- 
ereign, active in the discharge of his duties, and untainted 
by corrupt practice. Bat he cannot be said to have dis- 
played the sagacity of genius in his dealings with the Irish. 
He carried out instructions like a blunt proconsul — extir- 
pating O'Neil's rebellion, suppressing the Butlers' war, 
maintaining English interests, and exercising impartial jus- 
tice. The purity of his administration is beyond all doubt. 
Instead of enriching himself by arts familiar to viceroys, 
he spent in each year of his office more than its emolu- 
ments were worth, and seriously compromised his private 
fortune. Instead of making friends at Court he contrived, 
by his straightforward dealing, to offend the brilliant and 
subtle Earl of Ormond. While Sir Henry was losing 
health, money, and the delights of life among the bogs and 
wastes of Ulster, Ormond remained attached to the queen's 
person. His beauty and adroit flattery enabled him to 
prejudice Elizabeth against her faithful henchman. Broken 
in health by a painful disease contracted in the hardship 



20 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

of successive campaigns, maddened by Lis sovereign's re- 
criminations, and disgusted by her parsimony, Sir Henry 
Sidney returned in 1571 to England. He was now a man 
of forty-three, with an impaired constitution and a dimin- 
ished estate. His wife had lost her good looks in the 
small -pox, which she caught while nursing the queen 
through an attack of that malady. Of this noble lady, so 
patient in the many disasters of her troubled life, Fulkc 
Greville writes: "She chose rather to hide herself from 
the curious eyes of a delicate time than come upon the 
stage of the world with any manner of disparagement; 
this mischance of sickness having cast such a veil over her 
excellent beauty as the modesty of that sex doth many 
times upon their native and heroical spirits." Neither Sir 
Henry Sidney nor Lady Mary uttered a word of reproach 
against their royal mistress. It was Elizabeth's good fort- 
une to be devotedly served by men and women whom she 
rewarded with ingratitude or niggardly recognition. And 
on this occasion she removed Sir Henry from his dignity 
of Lord Deputy, which she transferred to his brother-in- 
law, Sir "William Fitz- William. As a kind of recompense 
she made him the barren offer of a peerage. The distinc- 
tion was great, but the Sidneys were not in a position to 
accept it. A letter, addressed to Lady Mary by Lord Bur- 
leigh, explains the difficulty in which they stood. Her 
husband, she says, is " greatly dismayed with his hard 
choice, which is presently offered him ; as, either to be a 
baron, now called in the number of many far more able 
than himself to maintain it withal, or else, in refusing it, 
to incur her Highness's displeasure." She points out that 
the title, without an accompanying grant of land, would be 
an intolerable burden. Elizabeth had clearly no intention 
of bestowing estates on the Sidney family ; and Lady Mary 



ii.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 21 

was forced to beg the secretary's good offices for mitigat- 
ing the royal anger in the event of Sir Henry's refusal. 
Of the peerage we hear no more ; and it is probable that 
Elizabeth took the refusal kindly. She had paid the late 
Deputy for his long service and heavy losses by a compli- 
ment, his non-acceptation of which left her with a seat in 
the House of Lords at her disposal. 

After leaving Oxford, Philip passed some months at 
Ludlow with his father, who continued to be President of 
Wales. In the spring of 1572 the project of a French 
match was taken up at Court. Mr. Francis Walsingham, 
the resident ambassador at Paris, had already opened ne- 
gotiations on the subject in the previous autumn; and the 
execution of the Duke of Norfolk for treasonable practice 
with Mary, Queen of Scots, now rendered Elizabeth's mar- 
riage more than ever politically advisable. It was to be 
regretted that the queen should meditate union with the 
Duke of Alencon. He was the youngest member of the 
worthless family of Valois, a Papist, and a man green in 
years enough to be her son. Yet at this epoch it seemed 
not wholly impossible that France might still side with 
the Protestant Powers. Catherine de' Medici, the queen- 
mother, had favoured the Huguenot party for some years; 
and Charles IX. was scheming the marriage of his sister 
Margaret with Henry of Navarre. The interests, more- 
over, of the French Crown were decidedly opposed to those 
of Spain. The Eari of Lincoln was, therefore, nominated 
Ambassador Extraordinary to sound the matter of his 
queen's contract with a prince of the French blood-royal. 
Sir Henry Sidney seized this opportunity for sending 
Philip on the grand tour; and Elizabeth granted licence 
to " her trusty and well-beloved Philip Sidney, Esq., to go 
out of England into parts beyond the sea, with three serv- 



22 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

ants and four horses, etc., to remain the space of two years 
immediately following his departure out of the realm, for 
the attaining the knowledge of foreign languages." On 
the 26th of May the expedition left London, Philip carry- 
ing a letter from his uncle Leicester to Francis Walsing- 
ham. This excellent man, who was destined after some 
years to become his father-in-law, counted among the best 
and wisest of English statesmen. He was a man of Sir 
Henry Sidney's, rather than of Leicester's, stamp ; and it 
is recorded of him, to his honour, that, after a life spent in 
public service, he died so poor that his funeral had to be 
conducted at night. 

When Lincoln returned to England with advice in favour 
of Alencon's suit, Philip stayed at Paris. The summer of 
1572 was an eventful one in French history. Charles IX. 
had betrothed his sister, Margaret of Valois, to Henry of 
Navarre ; and the Capital welcomed Catholic and Hugue- 
not nobles, the flower of both parties w T hich divided France, 
on terms of external courtesy and seeming friendship. 
Fulke Greville tells us that the king of Navarre was so struck 
with Philip's excellent disposition that he admitted him 
to intimacy. At the same time Charles IX., who had been 
installed Knight of the Garter on the same day as Philip's 
father, appointed him Gentleman in Ordinary of his bed- 
chamber. The patent runs as follows : " That considering 
how great the house of Sidenay was in England, and the 
rank it had always held near the persons of the kings and 
queens, their sovereigns, and desiring well and favourably 
to treat the young Sir Philip Sidenay for the good and 
commendable knowledge in him, he had retained and re- 
ceived him," etc. On the 9th of August " Baron Sidenay," 
as he is also described in this document, took the oaths 
and entered on his new office. His position at the French 



ii.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 23 

Court made him to some extent an actor in the ceremonial 
of Henry's wedding, which took place upon the 18th of 
August. It will be remembered that Margaret of Navarre 
had previously been pledged to the Duke of Guise, the am- 
bitious leader of the League, the sworn enemy to Reform, 
and the almost openly avowed aspirant after the French 
Crown. Before the altar she refused to speak or bend her 
head, when asked if she accepted Henry for her husband ; 
and her brother had to take her by the neck and force her 
into an attitude of assent. Already, then, upon the nuptial 
morning, ominous clouds began to gather over the political 
horizon. When the Duke of Guise marched his armed 
bands into Paris, the situation grew hazardous for the Hu- 
guenots. Then followed the attack upon Coligny's life, 
which exploded like the first cannon shot that preludes a 
general engagement. Yet the vain rejoicings in celebra- 
tion of that ill-omened marriage continued for some days ; 
until, when all was ready, on the 24th of August, Paris 
swam with the blood of the Huguenots. Anarchy and 
murder spread from the Capital to the provinces ; and dur- 
ing the seven days and more which followed, it is not known 
how many thousands of Protestants perished. In Rome 
Te Beums were sung, and commemorative medals struck. 
In England the Court went into mourning. The French 
ambassador, when ordered by his master to explain the 
reasons of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew to Elizabeth, 
excused himself from the performance of this duty. His 
words deserve to be recorded : " I should make myself an 
accomplice in that terrible business were I to attempt to 
palliate." The same man has also left a vivid account of 
his reception at Woodstock when the news arrived. " A 
gloomy sorrow sat on every face. Silence, as in the dead 
of night, reigned through all the chambers of the royal 



24 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

apartments. The ladies and courtiers were ranged on each 
side, all clad in deep mourning; and as I passed them, not 
one bestowed on me a civil look or made the least return 
of my salutes." 

Philip had taken refuge at the English embassy, and to 
this circumstance he possibly owed his life. The horrors 
of St. Bartholomew must, however, have made a terrible 
impression on his mind ; for there was no street in Paris 
which did not resound with the shrieks of the assassinated, 
the curses of their butchers, and the sharp ring of musket- 
ry. He knew that the king, intoxicated with a sudden 
blood-thirst, had levelled his harquebus from that window 
in the Louvre ; he knew that the Duke of Guise had tram- 
pled with his heel upon Coligny's naked corpse. It can- 
not be doubted that the bold and firm opposition which 
Philip subsequently offered to Elizabeth's French schemes 
of marriage had its root in the awful experience of those 
days of carnage. 

Early in September Lords Leicester and Burleigh de- 
spatched a formal letter frOm the Privy Council to Francis 
Walsingham, requesting him to provide for the safety of 
young Lord Wharton and Master Philip Sidney by procur- 
ing passports in due form, and sending them immediately 
back to England. It seems, however, that Sir Henry Sid- 
ney did not think a return to England necessary in his son's 
case. I J hilip left Paris, passed through Lorraine, visited 
Strasburg, stopped at Heidelberg, and came thence to Frank- 
fort. 

It would be interesting to know what social and political 
impressions the young man, now in his eighteenth year, 
carried away with him from Paris. Had he learned the 
essential baseness and phlegmatic wickedness of the Flor- 
entine queen-mother? Had he discerned that the king, 



ii.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 25 

crazy, misled, and delirious in his freaks and impulses, was 
yet the truest man of all his miserable breed? Had he 
taken a right measure of the Duke of Anjou — ghastly, 
womanish, the phantom of a tyrant; oscillating between 
Neronian debauchery and hysterical relapses into pietism? 
And the Duke of Alencon, Elizabeth's frog-faced suitor, 
had he perceived in him the would-be murderer of his broth- 
er, the poisonous traitor, whose innate malignancy justified 
his sister Margaret in saying that, if fraud and cruelty were 
banished from the world, he alone would suffice to repeople 
it with devils? Probably not; for the backward eye of 
the historian is more penetrative into the realities of char- 
acter than the broad, clear gaze of a hopeful gentleman 
upon his travels. We sound the depths revealed to us by 
centuries of laborious investigation. lie only beheld the 
brilliant, the dramatic, the bewilderingly fantastic outside 
of French society, as this was displayed in nuptial pomps 
and tournaments and massacres before him. Yet he ob- 
served enough to make him a firmer patriot, a more deter- 
mined Protestant, and an abhorrer of Italianated Courts. 
At Frankfort he found a friend, who, having shared the 
perils of St. Bartholomew, had recently escaped across the 
Rhine to Germany. This was Hubert Languet, a man 
whose conversation and correspondence exercised no small 
influence over the formation of Sidney's character. 

Languet was a Frenchman, born in 1518 at Viteaux in 
Burgundy. He studied the humanities in Italy, and was 
elected Professor of Civil Law at Padua in 1547. Two 
years later he made the acquaintance of Melanchthon. Their 
intercourse ripened into friendship. Languet resigned his 
professorship in order to be near the man whom he had 
chosen for his teacher ; and under Melanchthon's influence 
he adopted the reformed religion. From 1550 forwards 



26 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

lie was recognised as one of the leading political agents of 
the Protestant Powers, trusted by princes, and acquainted 
with the ablest men of that party in France, Holland, and 
the German States. No one was more competent to guide 
Sidney through the labyrinth of European intrigues, to un- 
mask the corruption hidden beneath the splendours of the 
Valois Court, and to instil into his mind those principles 
of conduct which governed reformed statesmen in those 
troubled times. They were both staying, as was then the 
custom, in the house of the printer Wechel at Frankfort. 
A few years later, Giordano Bruno also sojourned under 
that hospitable roof, whence he departed on his fatal jour- 
ney to Venice. The elder man immediately discerned in 
Sidney a youth of no common quality, and the attachment 
he conceived for him savoured of romance. We possess a 
long series of Latin letters from Languet to his friend, 
which breathe the tenderest spirit of affection, mingled with 
wise counsel and ever-watchful thought for the young man's 
higher interests. It was indeed one of Sidney's singular 
felicities that he fell so early under the influence of char- 
acters like Walsinodiam and Languet. Together with his 
father, they helped to correct the bias which he might have 
taken from his brilliant but untrustworthy uncle Leicester. 
There must have been something inexplicably attractive in 
his person and his genius at this time; for the tone of 
Languet's correspondence can only be matched by that of 
Shakespeare in the sonnets written for his unknown friend. 
Fulke Greville has penned a beautiful description of 
"this harmony of an humble hearer to an excellent teacher," 
which grew up between Sidney and Languet at Frankfort ; 
but he is mistaken in saying that the latter threw up all 
other business for the sake of attending his new-found 
friend upon his three years' travel. It is true that they 



ii.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 27 

went together to Vienna in the summer of 1573. Bat 
Sidney visited Hungary alone, and in November crossed 
the Alps without Languet to Venice. He was accom- 
panied by a gentleman of his own age and station, not 
very distantly connected with him, named Thomas Con- 
ingsby. Two of his attendants, Griffin Madox and Lewis 
Brysket, are also known to us. The latter writes thus of 
their journey : 

" Through many a hill and dale, 
Through pleasant woods, and many an unknown way, 
Along the banks of many silver streams 
Thou with him yodest ; and with him didst scale 
The craggy rocks of the Alps and Apennine ; 
Still with the muses sporting." 

One incident of the tour has to be recorded for the light it 
throws on Sidney's character. An innkeeper contrived to 
get his bill twice paid ; and Sidney finding himself out of 
pocket, charged Coningsby with having made away with 
the money. In a letter to Languet he cleared the matter 
up, and exculpated his travelling companion. But the in- 
cident was not greatly to his credit. With all his gravity 
and suavity of nature, he was apt to yield to temper and to 
unamiable suspicion. I shall have to revert to this point 
again. 

Since Sidney is now launched, without guide or tutor, 
upon his Italian travels, it will not be out of place to col- 
lect some contemporary opinions regarding the benefit to 
be derived by Englishmen from Italy. In a fine passage 
of "The Schoolmaster" Ascham relates a conversation 
which he had at Windsor with Sir Richard Sackville on 
this subject. His judgment was that young men lost far 
more than they gained by an Italian tour. Too many of 



28 SIR PHILIP SIDXEY. [chap. 

them returned Papists, or Atheists, experienced in new- 
fangled vices, apt for treason, lying, and every form of 
swinish debauchery. Taking for his text the well-known 
proverb, " Inglese italianato e un diavolo incamato" — 
which Sidney, by the way, has translated thus : 

" An Englishman that is Italianate, 
Doth lightly prove a devil incarnate," — 

Ascham preaches an eloquent sermon, with allegories from 
Plato and Homer, to prove that Italy is but a garden of 
Circe or an isle of sirens to our northern youth. Parker, 
Howell, Fuller, Hall, Gabriel Harvey, Marston, Greene, all 
utter the same note, and use the same admonishments, 
proving how very dangerous an Italian tour was reckoned 
in those days. Sidney, in a remarkable letter to Languet, 
insists upon the point. He says he wishes the Turks could 
come to Italy in order to find corruption there : " I am 
quite sure that this ruinous Italy would so poison the Turks 
themselves, would so ensnare them in its vile allurements, 
that they would soon tumble down without being pushed." 
Venice, in particular, had an evil reputation. There, as 
Ascham says, he saw in nine days' sojourn " more liberty 
to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble city of London 
in nine years." He admits, however, that while he knows 
of many who " returned out of Italy worse transformed 
than ever was any in Circe's court," yet is he acquainted 
with " divers noble personages and many worthy gentle- 
men of England, whom all the siren songs of Italy could 
never untwine from the mast of God's word, nor no en- 
chantment of vanity overturn them from the fear of God 
and love of honesty." To the former class belonged the 
Earl of Oxford. Of the latter Philip Sidney was an emi- 



il] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 29 

nent example. Like the bee which sucks honey from 
poisonous flowers, he gained only good from the travels 
which were so pernicious to his fellow-countrymen at 
large. 

His correspondence with Languet was doubtless useful 
to him, while residing at Venice and Padua. From it we 
learn something about his studies, which seem at this time 
to have been chiefly in philosophy and science. Languet 
urges him not to overwork himself; and he replies: "I 
am never so little troubled with melancholy as when my 
mind is employed about something particularly difficult." 
Languet on another occasion dissuades him from geometry : 
" You have too little mirthfulness in your nature, and this is 
a study which will make you still more grave." He recom- 
mends him to devote his time to such things as befit a 
man of high rank in life, and to prepare himself for the 
duties of a statesman rather than for the leisure of a liter- 
ary man. Sidney begs for a copy of Plutarch in Amyot's 
translation, says he is " learning astronomy and getting a 
knowledge of music," and is anxious to read the Politics 
of Aristotle. Meanwhile he frequented the sumptuous 
houses of the Venetian nobles : " Yet I would rather have 
one pleasant chat with you, my dear Languet, than enjoy 
all the magnificent magnificences of these magnificoes." 
He seems indeed to have been a grave youth. Who his 
intimate friends were, we do not know. Sarpi was away 
at Mantua; so it is not likely that he made his acquaint- 
ance. We hear, however, much of the young Count Philip 
Lewis of Hannau. 

At Venice Sidney sat for his portrait to Paolo Vero- 
nese, and sent the picture afterwards to Languet. What 
has become of this painting is not known. Possibly it still 
lies buried in some German collection. Of all the por- 



30 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

traits which are supposed to represent Sidney, the best to 
ray mind is one now preserved at Warwick Castle. It is 
said to have belonged to Fulke Greville, and therefore we 
raay trust its resemblance to the original. John Aubrey, 
the useful anecdote-monger, tells us that he was " extreme- 
ly beautiful. He much resembled his sister; but his hair 
was not red, but a little inclining, namely a dark amber 
colour. If I were to find a fault in it, raethinks 'tis not 
masculine enough ; yet he was a person of great courage." 
The Warwick Castle portrait answers very closely to this 
description, especially in a certain almost girlish delicacy 
of feature and complexion. That Sidney was indeed beau- 
tiful may be taken for granted, since there is considerable 
concurrence of testimony on this point. The only dissen- 
tient I can call to mind is Ben Jonson, who reported that 
he " was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being 
spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, and long." But 
Jonson was only thirteen years of age when Sidney died, 
and the conversations with Drummond, from which this 
sentence was quoted, abound in somewhat random state- 
ments. 

It was natural that a Telemachus of Sidney's stamp should 
wish to visit Rome before he turned his face northwards. 
But his Huguenot Mentor, and perhaps also his friends at 
home, so urgently dissuaded him from exposing his imma- 
turity to the blandishments of the Catholic Calypso, that 
he prudently refrained. After a short excursion to Genoa, 
he returned to Venice, crossed the Alps, and was again 
with Languet at Vienna in July. Here the grave youth, 
who had set his heart on becoming perfect in all gentle ac- 
complishments, divided his time between discourse on poli- 
tics and literature, courtly pleasures, and equestrian exer- 
cises. In the Defence of Poesy he has given us an agreeable 



ii.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 31 

picture of his Italian master in horsemanship, the gascon- 
ading; Puo-liano. 

The winter of 1574-75 passed away at Vienna. In the 
spring he attended the Emperor Maximilian to Prague, 
where he witnessed the opening of the Bohemian Diet. 
Thence he moved homewards through Dresden, Heidel- 
berg, Strasburg, and Frankfort, reaching London in June. 
During his absence one of his two sisters, Ambrozia, had 
died at Ludlow Castle. The queen took the other, Mary, 
under special protection, and attached her to her person. 
A new chapter was now opened in the young man's life. 
His education being finished, he entered upon the life of 
Courts. 



CHAPTER III. 

ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 

Sidney's prospects as a courtier were excellent. His 
powerful uncle Leicester, now at the height of royal favor, 
displayed marked partiality for the handsome youth, who 
was not unnaturally regarded by the world as his pre- 
sumptive heir. In July 1575 Philip shared those famous 
festivities with which the earl entertained Elizabeth at 
Kenihvorth; and when the Court resumed its progress, he 
attended her Majesty to Chartley Castle. This was the 
seat of the Earl of Essex, who was then in Ireland. The 
countess, in his absence, received her royal guest; and here 
Sidney, for the first time, met the girl with whom his fort- 
unes and his fame were destined to be blended. Lady 
Penelope Devereux, illustrious in English literature as Sir 
Philip Sidney's Stella, was now in her thirteenth year; 
and it is not likely that at this time she made any strong 
impression on his fancy. Yet we find that soon after the 
return of Essex from Ireland in the autumn of 1575, lie 
had become intimate with the earl's family. At Durham 
House, their London residence, he passed long hours dur- 
ing the following winter ; and when Essex went again to 
Ireland as Earl-Marshal in July 1576, Philip accompanied 
him. It should here be said that Sir Henry Sidney had 
been nominated for the third time Lord Deputy in August 



ch.iil] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 33 

1575. Philip's visit was therefore paid to his father; but 
lie made it in company with the man whom he had now 
come to regard as his future father-in-law. There is little 
doubt that had Lord Essex lived, the match would have 
been completed. But the Earl-Marshal died at Dublin on 
the 21st of September, after a painful illness, which raised 
some apparently ill-founded suspicions of poison. Philip 
was in Galway with his father, and Essex sent him this 
message on his deathbed : " Tell him I sent him nothing, 
but I wish him well ; so well that, if God do move their 
hearts, I wish that he might match with my daughter. I 
call him son ; he is so wise, virtuous, and godly. If he 
go on in the course he hath begun, he will be as famous 
and worthy a gentleman as ever England bred." These 
words are sufficient to prove that Philip's marriage with 
Penelope was contemplated by her father. That the 
world expected it appears from a letter of Mr. Edward 
Waterhouse to Sir Henry Sidney under date 14th Novem- 
ber. After first touching upon the bright prospects opened 
for "the little Earl of Essex," this gentleman proceeds: 
" and I suppose all the best sort of the English lords, be- 
sides, do expect what will become of the treaty between 
Mr. Philip and my Lady Penelope. Truly, my Lord, I 
must say to your Lordship, as I have said to my Lord of 
Leicester and Mr. Philip, the breaking off from their 
match, if the default be on your parts, will turn to more 
dishonour than can be repaired with any other marriage in 
England." 

What interrupted the execution of this marriage treaty 
is not certain. Penelope's mother, the widowed Lady 
Essex, was privately wedded to the Earl of Leicester soon 
after her first husband's death. The Sidneys were poor. 
Lady Mary Sidney writes to Lord Burleigh about this 



34 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

time : " My present estate is such by reason of my debts, 
as I cannot go forward with any honourable course of liv- 
ing." It is remarkable that, so far as we know, she placed 
but little confidence in her brother Leicester, preferring to 
appeal in difficulties to a friend like Cecil. Philip was 
often at a loss to pay his debts. We possess, for instance, 
the copy of a long bill from his bootmaker which he re- 
quests his father's steward to discharge " for the safeguard 
of his credit." Thus Leicester's marriage, which seriously 
impaired Philip's prospects, Lady Mary's want of cordiality 
toward her brother, and the poverty of the Sidneys, may 
be reckoned among the causes which postponed Penelope's 
betrothal. It should also here be noticed that Sir Henry 
Sidney entertained a grudge against the Earl of Essex. 
Writing to Lord Leicester, he couples Essex with his old 
enemy the Earl of Ormond, adding that "for that their 
malice, I take God to record, I could brook nothing of 
them both." We may therefore conclude that Philip's 
father was unfavourable to the match. But the chief 
cause remains to be mentioned. Up to this time the pro- 
posed bridegroom felt no lover's liking for the lady. 
Languet frequently wrote, urging him to marry, and using 
arguments similar to those which Shakespeare pressed on 
his " fair friend." Philip's answers show that, unless he 
was a deep dissembler, he remained heart-free. So time 
slipped by. Perhaps he thought that he might always 
pluck the rose by only asking for it. At any rate, he dis- 
played no eagerness, until one morning the news reached 
him that his Penelope was contracted to a man unworthy 
of her, Lord Rich. Then suddenly the flame of passion, 
which had smouldered so obscurely as to be unrecognised 
by his own heart, burst out into a blaze; and what was 
worse, he discovered that Penelope too loved him. In the 



Hi.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 35 

chapter devoted to Sidney's poetry I shall return to this 
subject. So much, however, had to be said here, in order 
to present a right conception of his character. For at 
least four years, between the death of Essex, in September 
1576, and Penelope's marriage, which we may place in the 
spring or summer of 1581, he was aware that her father 
with his last breath had blessed their union. Yet he never 
moved a step or showed any eagerness until it was too 
late. It seems that this grave youth, poet as he was, pas- 
sionate lover as he undoubtedly became, and hasty as he 
occasionally showed himself in trifles, had a somewhat 
politic and sluggish temperament. Fulke Greville recorded 
that he never was a boy ; Languet could chide him for 
being sad beyond his years ; he wrote himself, amid the 
distractions of Venetian society, that he required hard 
studies to drive away melancholy. Moreover, he indulged 
dreams of high and noble ambition. Self -culture, the 
preparation of his whole nature for some great task in life, 
occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of a woman's image. 
This saved him from the faults and follies of his age ; but 
it rendered him cold, until the poet's fire leaped up and 
kindled a slumbering emotion. 

Not love, but the ambition of a statesman, then was 
Sidney's ruling passion at this time. He had no mind to 
" sport with Amaryllis in the shade," or even to " meditate 
the thankless Muse," when work could be done for Eng- 
land and the affairs of Europe called for energetic action. 
In the spring of 1577 Elizabeth selected him for a mission, 
which flattered these aspirations. Rodolph of Hapsburg 
had just succeeded to the imperial throne, and the Elector 
Palatine had died, leaving two sons, Lewis and John 
Casimir. She sent Philip to congratulate the emperor 
and to condole with the bereaved princes. He stipulated 



36 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

that, after performing the ceremonial part of this embassy, 
he should be permitted to confer with the German Powers 
upon the best means of maintaining reformed principles 
and upholding political liberties. Instructions were ac- 
cordingly drawn up w T hich empowered the youthful envoy 
to touch upon these points. At the end of February he 
set out upon his travels, attended by Fulke Greville and by 
a train of gentlefolk. In the houses where he lodged he 
caused tablets to be fixed, emblazoned with his arms, under 
which ran a Latin inscription to this effect : " Of the most 
illustrious and well-born English gentleman, Philip Sidney, 
son of the Viceroy of Ireland, nephew of the Earls of 
Warwick and Leicester, Ambassador from the most Serene 
Queen of England to the Emperor." This ostentation was 
not out of harmony with the pompous habits of that age. 
Yet we may perhaps discern in it Sidney's incapacity to 
treat his own affairs with lightness. He took himself and 
all that concerned him au serieux ; but it must also be ob- 
served that he contrived to make others accept him in like 
manner. As Jonson puts it, when comparing himself, 
under the name of Horace, with men of less sterling merit : 

" If they should confidently praise their works, 
In them it would appear inflation ; 
Which, in a full and well-digested man, 
Cannot receive that foul, abusive name, 
But the fair title of erection." 

He first proceeded to Heidelberg, where he failed to find 
the Elector Lewis, but made acquaintance with the younger 
prince, his brother Casimir. The palatinate, like many of 
the petty German states, was torn by religious factions. 
The last elector had encouraged Calvinism ; but his son 
Lewis was now introducing Lutheran ministers into his do- 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 37 

minions. The Calvinists, after enduring considerable hard- 
ships, had to emigrate ; and many of them took refuge 
with Prince Casimir. It seems that before he reached 
Heidelberg, Sidney had been met by Hubert Languet; and 
this good counseller attended him through all his German 
wanderings. They went together to Prague, where the 
new emperor was holding his Court. Here, even more 
than at Heidelberg, the English Envoy found matter for 
serious disquietude. Rodolph had grown up under Catho- 
lic influences, and the Jesuits were gaining firm hold upon 
his capital. Students of history will remember that a Jes- 
uit Father had negotiated the participation of the Emperor 
Ferdinand in the closing of the Tridentine Council. Aus- 
tria, under his grandson Rodolph's rule, bid fair to become 
one of their advanced posts in northern Europe. Sidney 
meant, so far as in him lay, to shake the prestige of this 
"extremely Spaniolated" and priestridden emperor. It 
was his intention to harangue in Germany against the 
"fatal conjunction of Rome's undermining superstition 
with the commanding forces of Spain." Fulke Greville 
has sketched the main line of his argument ; but it is hard- 
ly probable that he bearded the lion in his den and spoke 
his mind out before the imperial presence. The substance 
of the policy he strove to impress upon those German 
princes who took the Protestant side, and upon all well- 
wishers to the people, was that the whole strength of their 
great nation could not save them from the subtle poison 
which Sarpi styled the Diacatholicou, unless they made a 
vigorous effort of resistance. Rome, by her insidious arts 
and undermining engines — by her Jesuits and casuistical 
sophistications — sapped the social fabric and dissolved the 
ancestral loyalties of races. Into the dismembered and 
disintegrated mass marched Spain with her might of arms, 



38 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

her money, her treaties, marriages, and encouragement of 
sedition. In short, Sidney uttered a prophecy of what 
happened in the Thirty Years' War, that triumph of Jesu- 
itical diplomacy. As a remedy he proposed that all the 
German Powers who valued national independence, and 
had a just dread of Spanish encroachment, should "asso- 
ciate by an uniform bond of conscience for the protection 
of religion and liberty." In other words, he espoused the 
policy of what was known as the Fcedus Evangelicum. 

Theoretically, this plan was not only excellent, but also 
necessary for stemming the advance of those reactionary 
forces, knit together by bonds of common interest and 
common enthusiasm, which governed the Counter Refor- 
mation. But unfortunately it rested upon no solid basis 
of practical possibilities. A Protestant Alliance, formed to 
secure the political and religious objects of the Reforma- 
tion in its warfare with Catholicism, had been the cherish- 
ed scheme of northern statesmen since the days of Henry 
VIII. The principles of evangelical piety, of national free- 
dom, of progressive thought, and of Teutonic emancipation 
upon regulated methods, might perhaps have been estab- 
lished, if the Church of England could have combined with 
the Lutherans of Germany, the Calvinists of Geneva, and of 
France, Sweden, and the Low Countries, in a solid confed- 
eration for the defence of civil and religious liberty. But 
from the outset, putting national jealousies and diplomatic 
difficulties aside, there existed in the very spirit of Protest- 
antism a power antagonistic to cohesion. Protestantism 
had its root in critical and sceptical revolt. From the first 
it assumed forms of bewildering diversity on points of doc- 
trine. Each of its sects passed at an early stage into dog- 
matism, hardly less stubborn than that of the Catholic 
Church. It afforded no common or firm <xroundwork for 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 39 

alliance. Lutherans, Zwinglians, Anglicans, Anabaptists, 
Hussites, Calvinists, Sacramentanans, Puritans, could not 
work together for a single end. It has always been thus 
with the party of progress, the Liberals of world-transform- 
ing moments in the march of thought. United by no 
sanctioned Credo, no fixed Corpus Fidel, no community of 
Conservative tradition ; owing no allegiance to a spiritual 
monarch ; depending for their being on rebellion against 
authority and discipline ; disputing the fundamental prop- 
ositions from which organisation has hitherto been ex- 
panded, — they cannot act in concert. These men are in- 
novators, scene-shifters, to whom the new scene, as in the 
plan of God it will appear, is still invisible. They are 
movers from a fixed point to a point yet unascertained. 
Each section into which they crystallise, and where as sects 
they sterilise, conceives the coming order according to its 
narrow prejudices. Each sails toward the haven of the 
future by its own ill-balanced compass, and observes self- 
chosen stars. The very instinct for change, the very ap- 
prehension which sets so-called Reformers in motion, im- 
plies individualities of opinion and incompatibilities of 
will. Therefore they are collectively weak when ranged 
against the ranks of orthodoxy and established discipline. 
It is only because the life of the world beats in their hearts 
and brains, because the onward faces of humanity are with 
them, that they command our admiration. The victory of 
liberalism in modern Europe was won at the cost of retro- 
grade movements — such as the extinction of free thought 
in Italy and Spain, the crushing of the Huguenots in 
France, the bloody persecution of the Netherlands, the 
Thirty Years' War, and the ossification of the Reformed 
Churches into inorganic stupidity. And the fruits of the 
victory fall not to any sect of Protestantism, but to a new 



40 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

spirit which arose in Science and the Revolution. To ex- 
pect, therefore, as Sidney and the men with whom he sym- 
pathised expected, that a Protestant League could be form- 
ed, capable of hurling back the tide of Catholic reaction, 
was little short of the indulgence of a golden dream. Facts 
and the essence of the Reformation were against its possi- 
bility. As a motive force in the world, Protestantism was 
already well-nigh exhausted. Its energy had already pass- 
ed into new forms. The men of the future were now rep- 
resented by philosophers like Bruno and Bacon, by naviga- 
tors of the world like Drake, by explorers of the heavens 
like Galileo, by anatomists and physicists like Vesalius, 
Servetus, Sarpi, Harvey. 

Whatever Sidney's hopes and dreams may have been, the 
religious discords of Germany, torn asunder by Protestant 
sectarians and worm-eaten to the core by Jesuitical propa- 
gandists, must have rudely disilluded him. And no one 
was better fitted than Langnet to dissect before his eyes 
the humours and imposthumes of that unwieldy body pol- 
itic. They left Prague at the end of April, travelled togeth- 
er to Heidelberg, visited the Landgrave of Hesse, and ar- 
rived at Cologne in May. Here Sidney thought that he 
must turn his face immediately homewards, though he great- 
ly wished to pass into Flanders. Languet dissuaded him, 
on grounds of prudence, from doing so without direct com- 
mission from the queen. Great therefore was the satisfac- 
tion of both when letters arrived from England, ordering 
Sidney to compliment William the Silent, Prince of Orange, 
on the birth of his son. During this visit to the Nether- 
lands he made acquaintance with the two most distinguished 
men there r and won the respect of both. Don John of 
Austria, the victor of Lepanto, was then acting as viceroy 
to the King of Spain. Sidney paid him his respects, and 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 41 

this is the account Fulke Greville gives of his recep- 
tion : — 

" Though at the fi-rst, in his Spanish haughture, he (Don John) 
gave him access as by descent to a youth, of grace as to a stranger, 
and in particular competition, as he conceived, to an enemy ; yet after 
a while that he had taken his just altitude, he found himself so 
stricken with this extraordinary planet that the beholders wondered 
to see what ingenuous tribute that brave and high-minded prince 
paid to his worth, giving more honour and respect to this hopeful 
young gentleman than to the ambassadors of mighty princes." 

What happened at Sidney's interview with William of 
Orange is not told us. That he made a strong impression 
on the stadtholder appears from words spoken to Fulke 
Greville after some years. Greville had been sent as am- 
bassador to the prince at Delft. Among other things Will- 
iam bade him report to Queen Elizabeth his opinion " that 
her Majesty had one of the ripest and greatest counsellors 
of estate in Sir Philip Sidney that at this day lived in 
Europe ; to the trial of which he was pleased to leave his 
own credit engaged until her Majesty might please to em- 
ploy this gentleman either amongst her friends or enemies." 
Sidney's caution prevented his friend from delivering this 
message to a sovereign notoriously jealous of foreign inter- 
ference in her home affairs. 

Philip was in London again in June, when he presented 
his respects to her Majesty at Greenwich. That he had 
won credit by the discharge of his embassy appears from 
a letter written by Mr. Secretary Walsingham to Sir Henry 
Sidney soon after his arrival. " There hath not been any 
gentleman, I am sure, these many years that hath gone 
through so honourable a charge with as great commenda- 
tions as he : in consideration whereof I could not but com- 
municate this part of my joy with your Lordship, being no 
3 



42 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

less a refreshing unto me in these my troublesome businesses 
than the soil is to the chafed stag." Henceforth we may 
regard our hero as a courtier high in favour with the queen, 
esteemed for his solid parts by the foremost statesmen of 
the realm, in correspondence with the leaders of the Re- 
formed party on the Continent, and surely marked out for 
some employment of importance. He had long to wait, 
however, before that craving for action in the great world 
which we have already indicated as his leading passion, 
could even in part be gratified. Meanwhile it was his duty 
to hang about the Court ; and how irksome he found that 
petty sphere of compliments, intrigues, and gallantries, can 
be read in the impatient letters he addressed to Languet. 
Their correspondence was pretty regularly maintained, al- 
though the old man sometimes grumbled at his young 
friend's want of attention. " Weigh well, I beseech you, 
what it is to grudge through so long a space of time one 
single hour to friends who love you so dearly, and who are 
more anxious for you than for themselves. By omitting 
one dance a month you could have abundantly satisfied 
us." In this strain Languet writes occasionally. But his 
frequent reference to Philip's " sweetest letters," and the 
familiarity he always displays with his private affairs, show 
that the young courtier was a tolerably regular correspond- 
ent. It is difficult for elderly folk, when they have con- 
ceived ardent affection for their juniors, to remember how 
very much more space the young occupy in the thoughts 
of the old than the old can hope to command in youthful 
brains distracted by the multifarious traffic of society. 
Languet had little to do but to ply his pen in his study. 
Sidney had to follow the queen on progress, trifle with her 
ladies, join in games of skill and knightly exercises with the 
gentlemen about the Court. Yet it is certain that this life 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 43 

wearied him. He was for ever seeking to escape ; at one 
time planning to join Prince Casimir in the Low Countries ; 
at another to take part in Frobisher's expedition ; and more 
than once contemplating " some Indian project." Languet 
did his best to curb these wandering ambitions. He had 
conceived a very firm opinion that Sidney was born to be 
a statesman, not a soldier of fortune, not an explorer of the 
ocean. At the same time, he greatly dreaded lest his friend 
should succumb to the allurements of fashionable idleness. 
" My noble Sidney, you must avoid that persistent siren, 
sloth." " Think not that God endowed you with parts so 
excellent to the end that you should let them rot in leisure. 
Rather hold firmly that He requires more from you than 
from those to whom He has been less liberal of talents." 
" There is no reason to fear lest you should decay in idle- 
ness if only you will employ your mind ; for in so great a 
realm as England opportunity will surely not be wanting 
for its useful exercise." Nature has adorned you with the 
richest gifts of mind and body ; fortune with noble blood 
and wealth and splendid family connections; and you from 
your first boyhood have cultivated your intellect by those 
studies which are most helpful to men in their struggle af- 
ter virtue. Will you then refuse your energies to your coun- 
try when it demands them? "Will you bury that distin- 
guished talent God has given you ?" The career Languet 
had traced out for Philip was that of a public servant ; and 
he consistently strove to check the young man's restless- 
ness, to overcome his discouragement, and to stimulate him 
while depressed by the frivolities of daily life. It was his 
object to keep Philip from roaming or wasting his pow r ers 
on adventure, while he also fortified his will against the se- 
ductions of an idle Court. 

During this summer of 1577 Languet once or twice al- 



44 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

hides in very cautious language to some project of great 
importance which had recently been mooted between them 
on the Continent. It involved the participation of emi- 
nent foreigners. It required the sanction and active as- 
sistance of the queen. What this was we do not know. 
Some of Sidney's biographers are of opinion that it con- 
cerned his marriage with a German noblewoman. Others 
— perhaps with better reason — conjecture that his candidat- 
ure for the Polish Crown had then been mooted. When 
Henri III. resigned the throne of Poland for that of France 
in 1574 Stephen Bathori was elected king. He lived un- 
til 1585. But in 1577, the year of Languet's mysterious 
letters, he had not yet given substantial proof of his future 
policy ; and the Protestant party in Europe might have 
been glad to secure a nominee of the English queen as can- 
didate in the case of a vacancy. There is no doubt that a 
belief prevailed after Sidney's death that the crown of Po- 
land had in some sort been offered him. The author of 
The Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney mentions it. Sir 
Robert Naunton asserts that the queen refused "to further 
his advancement, not only out of emulation, but out of fear 
to lose the jewel of her times." Fuller says that Sidney 
declined the honour, preferring to be "a subject to Queen 
Elizabeth than a sovereign beyond the seas." It would be 
far too flattering to Philip to suppose that a simple Eng- 
lish gentleman in his twenty-third year received any actual 
offer of a throne which a king of France had recently va- 
cated, and which was generally given by election to such 
as could afford to pay dearly for the honour. Yet it is 
not impossible that the Reformed princes of Germany may 
have thought him a good pawn to play, if Elizabeth were 
willing to back him. The Foedus Evangelicum, it must be 
remembered, was by no means yet devoid of actuality. 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 45 

Mary Sidney's recent marriage to the Earl of Pembroke 
had strengthened the family by an alliance with one of 
England's chief noblemen. After coming home Philip 
paid his sister a visit at Wilton, returning, however, soon 
to Court in order to watch his father's interests. Sir Hen- 
ry Sidney was still at his post as Lord Deputy of Ireland ; 
and in his absence the usual intrigues were destroying his 
credit with the queen. Brilliant, unscrupulous, mendacious, 
Ormond poured calumnies and false insinuations into her 
ear. She gave the earl too easy credence, partly because 
he was handsome, and partly because the government of 
Ireland was always costing money. There seems little 
doubt that Sir Henry made no pecuniary profit for himself 
out of his viceroyalty, and that he managed the realm as 
economically and as justly as was possible. Ormond and 
the nobles of his party, however, complained that the Lord 
Deputy decided cases inequitably against them, that his 
method of government was ruinously expensive, and that 
he tyrannously exacted from them land-taxes which had 
been remitted by his predecessors. Philip undertook his 
father's defence in a written statement, only the rough 
notes of which, and those imperfect, have come down to 
us. He met the charge of injustice by challenging the ac- 
cusers to show evidence. On the question of the land-tax, 
or cess, which Ormond and others claimed to have remit- 
ted, he proved the inequity and the political imprudence of 
freeing great nobles from burdens which must be paid by 
the poor. These poor, moreover, were already taxed by 
their lords, and shamefully ill-treated by them. "And priv- 
ileged persons, forsooth, be all the rich men of the pale, 
the burden only lying upon the poor, who may groan, for 
their cry cannot be heard." Sir Henry had proposed to 
convert the cess, computed at an average of ten pounds, 



46 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

into a fixed annual payment of five marks. At this the 
nobles cried out that they were being robbed. Philip 
demonstrated that, according to their own showing, a very 
easy compromise had been offered them. On the head of 
economy, he was able to make it clear that his father's ad- 
ministration tended to save money to the State, allowing 
always for the outlay needed by an army in occupation of 
a turbulent and disaffected country. Such a government 
as that of Ireland could not be conducted cheaper. But 
some had urged that the Lord Deputy exceeded measure 
in the severity of his justice and the cruelty of his execu- 
tive. Philip contended that a greater lenity than that 
which his father showed would have been worse than folly. 
What he w ? rote upon this point is worthy of careful peru- 
sal at the present day. It reminds us that the Irish diffi- 
culty has been permanent, and without appreciable altera- 
tion, through three centuries. "Little is lenity to prevail 
in minds so possessed with a natural inconstancy ever to 
go in a new fortune, with a revengeful hate to all English 
as to their only conquerors, and that which is most of all, 
with so ignorant obstinacy in Papistry that they do in 
their souls detest the present Government." And again : 
" Truly the general nature of all countries not fully con- 
quered is against it (i.e. against gentle dealing and conces- 
sions). For until by time they find the sweetness of due 
subjection, it is impossible that any gentle means should 
put out the remembrance of their lost liberty. And that 
the Irishman is that way as obstinate as any nation, with 
whom no other passion can prevail but fear (besides their 
history, which plainly points it out), their manner of life, 
wherein they choose rather all filthiness than any law, and 
their own consciences, who best know their own natures, 
give sufficient proof of. For under the sun there is not a 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 47 

nation that live more tyrannously than they do one over 
the other." 

This defence seems to have satisfied Elizabeth and excul- 
pated the Lord Deputy, without impairing its writer's cred- 
it at Court. It is the first of a series of semi-official doc- 
uments, in which, more perhaps than in any other species 
of composition, Sidney showed his power as a master of 
language. W.itei'house wrote to Sir Henry that it was the 
most excellent discourse he had ever read, adding, " Let no 
man compare with Sir Philip's pen." During the dispute, 
and before the queen had expressed her satisfaction with 
the Lord Deputy's defence, Ormond addressed some re- 
marks to Philip in the presence of the Court. The young 
man made no reply, marking his hostility by silence. It 
was expected that a duel would follow upon this affront to 
the great Irish earl. But Ormond, judging it expedient to 
treat Sidney as a virtuous gentleman who was bound to 
defend his father's cause, conceded him the indulgence of 
a superior. 

The storm which threatened Sir Henry Sidney blew 
over, in great measure owing to his son's skilful advocacy. 
Still Elizabeth retained her grudge against the Viceroy. 
He had not yet contrived to flatter that most sensitive 
member of the royal person — her pocket. Consequently, 
the year 15*78 scarcely opened before new grievances arose. 
The queen talked of removing Sir Henry from his office — 
with, perchance, the cumbrous honour of a peerage. He, 
on the other hand, presented bills to the amount of three 
thousand and one pounds, for money disbursed from his 
private estate in the course of public business. She re- 
fused to sign a warrant for their payment, alleging, appar- 
ently, that the Lord Deputy was creating debts of State in 
his own interest. Sir Henry retorted — and all the extant 



48 SIR PHILIP SIDNEV. [chap. 

documents tend to the belief that his retort was true — that 
he had spent thus much of his own moneys upon trust for 
her Majesty ; and that he needed the sum, barring one 
pound, for the payment of his daughter's marriage portion 
to the Earl of Pembroke. Perusal of the correspondence 
seems to me to prove that, however bad a diplomatist and 
stubborn a viceroy Sir Henry may have been, he was, at 
any rate, a thoroughly honest man. And this honest man's 
debts, contracted in her name and in her service, the queen 
chose to repudiate. It is not wonderful that, under these 
circumstances, the Lord Deputy thought of throwing up 
his appointment and retiring into private life in England. 
Philip's persuasions induced his father to abandon this de- 
sign. He pointed out that the term of office would expire 
at Michaelmas, and that it would be more for the Deputy's 
credit to tender his resignation at that time without an 
open rupture. One of his letters shows how valuable in 
these domestic counsels was the Lady Mary Sidney. Philip 
writes that in the meantime — that is, between Ladyday and 
Michaelmas — Sir Henry's friends would do their best to 
heal the breach ; " Among which friends, before God, there 
is none proceeds either so thoroughly or so wisely as your 
lady, my mother. For mine own part, I have had only 
light from her." 

These sentences afford a very pleasing insight into the 
relations between father, mother, and eldest son. But the 
tension of the situation for Philip at Court, playing his 
part as queen's favourite while his father was disgraced, 
shouldering the Irish braggarts whom she protected, and 
who had declared war against her viceroy, presenting a 
brave front before the world, with only an impoverished 
estate to back him, — the tension of this situation must 
have been too great for his sensitive nerves. We find that 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 49 

he indulged suspicions. Things transpired at Court which 
he believed had been committed only in most private cor- 
respondence to Sir Henry. He wrote to his father : " I 
must needs impute it to some men about you that there is 
little written from you or to you that is not perfectly 
known to your professed enemies." A few weeks after 
penning these words he thought that he had caught the 
culprit in Mr. Edmund Molineux, Sir Henry's secretary. 
This explains the following furious epistle, which no biog- 
rapher of Sidney should omit in its proper place : — 

" Mr. Molineux — Few words are best. My letters to my father 
have come to the ears of some : neither can I condemn any but you. 
If it be so, you have played the very knave with me ; and so I will 
make you know, if I have good proof of it. But that for so much as 
is past. For that is to come, I assure you, before God, that if ever I 
know you to do so much as read any letter I write to my father with- 
out his commandment or my consent, I will thrust my dagger into 
you. And trust to it, for I speak in earnest. In the meantime, fare- 
well. — From Court, this last of May 1578. By me, 

"Philip Sidney." 

Philip had made a great mistake — a mistake not unlike 
that which betrayed him into false judgment of his com- 
rade Coningsby. Molineux was as true as steel to his fa- 
ther, as loyal as Abdiel to the house of Sidney. It was he 
who composed for Hollingshed the heartfelt panegyrics of 
Sir Henry, Sir Philip, and Lady Mary. On this occasion 
he met the young man's brutal insults with words which 
may have taught him courtesy. The letter deserves to be 
given in its integrity : — 

" Sir — I have received a letter from you winch as it is the first, 
so the same is the sharpest that I ever received from any ; and there- 
fore it amazeth me the more to receive such an one from you, since I 
have (the world can judge) deserved better somewhere, howsoever it 
3* 



50 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

pleased you to condemn me now. But since it is (I protest to God) 
without cause, or yet just ground of suspicion, you use me thus, I 
bear the injury more patiently for a time, and mine innocency I hope 
in the end shall try mine honesty, and then I trust you will confess 
that you have done me wrong. And since your pleasure so is ex- 
pressed that I shall not henceforth read any of your letters (although 
I must confess I have heretofore taken both great delight and profit 
in reading some of them) yet upon so hard a condition as you seem 
to offer, I will not hereafter adventure so great peril, but obey you 
herein. Howbeit, if it had pleased you, you might have commanded 
me in a far greater matter with a less penalty. — Yours, when it shall 
please you better to conceive of me, humbly to command, 

" F. Molineux." 



We doubt not that Philip made honourable amends for 
his unjust imputations, since good friendship afterwards 
subsisted between him and Molineux. The incident, on 
which I have thought fit to dwell, reveals something not 
altogether pleasing in our hero's character. But the real 
deduction to be drawn from it is that his position at this 
time was well-nigh intolerable. 

In the midst of these worrying cares he remained in at- 
tendance on the queen. It seems that he journeyed with 
the Court in all her progresses ; and in May he formed part 
of the royal company which Leicester welcomed to his 
house at Wanstead. The entertainment provided for her 
Majesty was far simpler than that so famous one at Kenil- 
worth in 1575. Yet it has for us a special interest, inas- 
much as here Philip produced his first literary essay. This 
w T as a rural masque entitled, The Lady of the May. How 
it came to be written we know not; peradventure at two 
sittings, between the evening's dance and retirement to bed. 
The thino; is slight and without salt. If it were not still 
quoted in the list of Sidney's works, we should not notice 
it ; and why it ever was printed I am unable to conjecture, 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 51 

except upon the supposition that even in Elizabeth's days 
the last drops from a famous pen, however dull they were, 
found publishers. Of dramatic conception or of power in 
dialogue it shows nothing; nor are the lyrics tuneful. 
There is plenty of flattery introduced, apparently to glut 
the queen's appetite for mud-honey, but yet so clumsily 
applied as to suggest a suspicion whether the poet were 
not laughing at her. The only character which reveals 
force of portraiture and humour is that of Rombus, the 
pedagogue, into whose mouth Sidney has put some long- 
winded speeches, satirising the pedantic and grossly igno- 
rant style in vogue among village school-masters. Rombus, 
in fact, is a very rough sketch for the picture of Master 
Holof ernes, as may be judged by his exordium to Queen 
Elizabeth — 

" Stage Direction.— -Then came forward Master Rombus, and, with 
many special graces, made this learned oration : — 
"Now the thunder-thumping Jove transfund his dotes into your 
excellent formosity, which have, with your resplendent beams, thus 
segregated the enmity of these rural animals : I am * potentissima 
domina,' a school-master ; that is to say, a pedagogue, one not a little 
versed in the disciplinating of the juvenile fry, wherein, to my laud I 
say it, I use such geometrical proportion, as neither wanted mansue- 
tude nor correction : for so it is described — 

" 'Parcare subjectos, et debellire superbos.' 

Yet hath not the pulchritude of my virtues protected me from the 
contaminating hands of these plebeians ; for coming, ' solummodo,' 
to have parted their sanguinolent fray, they yielded me no more rev- 
erence than if I had been some 'pecorius asinus.' I, even I, that am, 
who am I ? ' Dixi ; verbus sapiento satum est.' But what said that 
Trojan JEneas, when he sojourned in the surging sulks of the sandif- 

erous seas? . . .. , 

" 'Haec olim memonasse juvebit.' 

Well, well, 'ad propositos revertebo;' the purity of the verity is, that 



52 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

a certain ( pulchra puella profecto,' elected and constituted by the in- 
tegrated determination of all this topographical region, as the sover- 
eign lady of this dame Maia's month, hath been, ' quodammodo,' hunt- 
ed, as you would say ; pursued by two, a brace, a couple, a cast of 
young men, to whom the crafty coward Cupid had, ' inquam,' deliv- 
ered his dire dolorous dart." 



During this summer Philip obtained a place at Court, 
the importance of which his friend Languet seems to have 
exaggerated. Zoucli says it was the post of cup-bearer to 
the queen ; and in this statement there is no improbability, 
but there is also nothing to warrant it. At any rate the 
office failed to satisfy his ambition ; for he wrote com- 
plainingly, as usual, of the irksomeness of Court existence. 
How disagreeable that must in some respects have been is 
made clear to us by Lady Mary's letters in the autumn of 
this year. She was expecting her husband home from Ire- 
land. He had to reside with her at Hampton Court, where 
she could only call one bedroom her own. To the faithful 
Molineux she writes : — 



" I have thought good to put you in remembrance to move my 
Lord Chamberlain in my Lord's name, to have some other room 
than my chamber for my Lord to have his resort unto, as he was 
wont to have ; or else my Lord will be greatly troubled, when he 
shall have any matters of despatch : my lodgings, you see, being very 
little, and myself continually sick and not able to be much out of my 
bed. For the night-time one roof, with God's grace, shall serve us. 
For the daytime, the queen will look to have my chamber always in 
a readiness for her Majesty's coming thither; and though my Lord 
himself can be no impediment thereto by his own presence, yet his 
Lordship, trusting to no place else to be provided for him, will be, 
as I said before, troubled for want of a convenient place for the de- 
spatch of such people as shall have occasion to come to him. There- 
fore, I pray you, in my Lord's own name, move my Lord of Sussex 
for a room for that purpose, and I will have it hanged and lined for 



hi.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 53 

him with stuff from hence. I wish you not to be unmindful hereof ; 
and so for this time I leave you to the Almighty.— From Chiswick, 
this 11th October 1578." 

It would appear that Lady Mary's very modest request 
for a second room, which she undertook to furnish out of 
her own wardrobe, was not at once granted. Another letter 
to Molineux shows that he bad made some progress in the 
matter, but had not succeeded. Hampton Court, she writes, 
however full it may be, has always several spare rooms. 
Perhaps there are those who " will be sorry my Lord should 
have so sure footing in the Court." Could not Molineux 
contrive the loan of a parlour for her husband in the day- 
time ? Yet, after all, " when the worst is known, old Lord 
Harry and his old Moll will do as well as they can in part- 
ing, like good friends, the small portion allotted our long 
service in Court." There is something half pathetic and 
half comic in the picture thus presented to our minds of 
the great Duke of Northumberland's daughter, with her 
husband, the Viceroy of Ireland and Wales, dwelling at 
hugger-mugger in one miserable chamber— she well-nigh 
bedridden, he transacting his business in a corner of it, and 
the queen momently expected upon visitations, not always, 
we may guess, of friendship or affection. Yet the touch 
of homely humour in the last sentence I have quoted from 
the noble lady's letter, sheds a pleasant light upon the sor- 
did scene. 

Studying the details of Court life both in Italy and Eng- 
land at this period, we are often led to wonder why noble- 
men with spacious palaces and venerable mansions of their 
own to dwell in— why men of genius whose brilliant gifts 
made them acceptable in every cultivated circle— should 
have submitted so complacently to its ignoble conditions. 
Even those who seemed unable to breathe outside the sphere 



54 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

of the Court spoke most bitterly against it. Tasso squan- 
dered bis health, his talents, nay, his reason, in that servi- 
tude. Guarini, after impairing his fortune, and wasting the 
best years of his manhood at Ferrara, retired to a country 
villa, and indulged his spleen in venomous invectives against 
the vices and the ignominies he had abandoned. Marino, 
who flaunted his gay plumage at Turin and Paris, screamed 
like a cockatoo with cynical spite whenever the word Court 
was mentioned. The only wise man of that age in Italy 
was the literary bravo Aretino. He, having debauched his 
youth in the vilest places of the Roman Courts, resolved to 
live a free man henceforth. Therefore he took refuge in 
Venice, where he caressed his sensual appetites and levied 
blackmail on society. From that retreat, which soon be- 
came a sty of luxury, he hurled back upon the Courts the 
filth which he had gathered in them. His dialogue on 
Court service is one of the most savage and brutally naked 
exposures of depravity which satirical literature contains. 
In England there was indeed a far higher tone of manliness 
and purity and personal independence at the Court than 
obtained in Italy. Yet listen to Spenser's memorable lines, 
obviously poured forth from the heart and coloured by bit- 
terest experience : — 

11 Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, 
What hell it is iti suing long to bide : 
To lose good days, that might be better spent ; 
To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; 
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; 
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; 
To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers' ; 
To have thy asking, yet wait many years ; 
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ; 
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs ; 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 55 

To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, 
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone : 
Unhappy wight, born to disastrous end, 
That doth his life in so long tendance spend I" 

Therefore we return to wondering what it was in Courts 
which made gentlefolk convert broad acres into cash that 
they might shine there, which lured noblemen from their 
castles and oak-shaded deer-parks to occupy a stuffy bed- 
room in a royal palace, and squires from their moss-grown 
manor-houses to jolt along the roads on horseback in at- 
tendance on a termagant like Elizabeth or a learned pig 
like James I. The real answer to these questionings is 
that, in the transition from mediaeval to modern conditions 
of life, the Court had become a social necessity for folk of 
a certain quality and certain aspirations. It was the only 
avenue to public employment; the only sphere in which 
a man of ambition, who was neither clerk in orders nor 
lawyer, could make his mark; the only common meeting- 
ground for rank, beauty, wealth, and genius. Thus it exer- 
cised a splendid fascination, the reflex of which is luminous 
in our dramatic literature. After reading those sad and 
bitter lines of Spenser, we should turn the pages of Fletch- 
er's Valentinian, where the allurements of the Court are 
eloquently portrayed in the great scene of Lucina's attempt- 
ed seduction. Or better, let us quote the ecstasies of For- 
frunatus from the most fanciful of Dekker's plays : — 

" For still in all the regions I have seen, 
I scorned to crowd among the muddy throng 
Of the rank multitude, whose thickened breath, 
Like to condensed fogs, do choke that beauty 
"Which else would dwell in every kingdom's cheek. 
No, I still boldly stepped into their courts, 
For there to live 'tis rare, oh, 'tis divine ! 



56 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

There shall you see faces angelical ; 

There shall you see troops of chaste goddesses, 

Whose star-like eyes have power (might they still shine) 

To make night day, and day more crystalline : 

Near these you shall behold great heroes, 

White-headed counsellors, and jovial spirits, 

Standing like fiery cherubims to guard 

The monarch who in god-like glory sits 

In midst of these, as if this deity 

Had with a look created a new world, 

The standers-by being the fair workmanship." 

Philip, like so many of his contemporaries, continued to 
waver between the irresistible attraction of the Court and 
the centrifugal force which urged him to be up and doing, 
anywhere, at any occupation, away from its baneful and 
degrading idleness. Just now, in the summer of 1578, lie 
was hankering to join his friend, John Casimir, at Zutphen. 
Elizabeth had nominated this prince to her lieutenancy in 
the Low Countries, supplying bim with money in small 
quantities for the levying of troops. When he took the 
field, Philip burned to accept an invitation sent him by the 
prince. But first he bad to gain his father's permission. 
Sir Henry's answer is the model of kindness and of gentle 
unselfishness. He begins by acknowledging the honour 
paid his son, and commending Philip's eagerness. But 
"when I enter into the consideration of mine own estate, 
and call to mind what practices, informations, and wicked 
accusations are devised against me, and what an assistance 
in the defence of those causes your presence would be unto 
me, reposing myself so much both upon your help and judg- 
ment, I strive betwixt honour and necessity what allowance 
I may best give of that motion for your going." Then he 
goes on to say that lie leaves the consideration of these 
matters to his son, and will in no way check his inclination 



in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 57 

or refuse his consent. Philip sacrificed his wishes, and 
remained in England to assist his father. This act of filial 
compliance cost him, as it happened, nothing ; for Casimir's 
dealings in the Netherlands brought no credit to himself or 
his companions. None the less should we appreciate the 
amiable trait in Sidney's character. 

Sir Henry returned in due course to England in the au- 
tumn, and tendered his resignation of the Irish Viceroyalty. 
He still maintained his post as Lord President of Wales. 
On New Year's Day, 1579, presents were exchanged, as 
usual, between Elizabeth and her chief courtiers. Poor Sir 
Henry, out of pocket as he was, presented her Majesty with 
a jewel of gold, diamonds, pearls, and rubies, upon which 
was wrought a figure of Diana. She returned a hundred 
and thirty-eight ounces of gold plate. Lady Mary and 
Philip offered articles of dress, receiving their equivalent in 
plate. Prince Casimir, who had to answer for his malcon- 
duct of affairs in the Low Countries, reached London in 
the month of January. The queen gave him a gracious 
reception. He was nominated to a stall in St. George's 
chapel, and entertained with various amusements. Among 
other sport?, we hear that he shot a stag in Hyde Park. 
On the 12th of February he again left England with pres- 
ents from the queen. A letter of the day significantly al- 
ludes to her unwilling bestowal of money on the prince: 
" There hath been somewhat to do to bring her unto it, 
and Mr. Secretary Walsingham bare the brunt thereof." 

One incident of Casimir's visit must not be omitted. 
Hubert Languet, old as he now was, and failing in health, 
resolved to set his eyes once more on his beloved Philip. 
"I am almost afraid," he wrote in January, "that my 
great desire of seeing you may betray me into thinking I 
am better than I am, yet I will do my very utmost to be 



58 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. hi. 

ready for the journey, even though I should take it at the 
peril of my life." He came and went safely, had the 
pleasure of conversing with Philip, and made friends with 
the chief members of the Sidney family. A letter written 
in the autumn of the next year shows that this experienced 
judge of men and cities formed no very favourable opin- 
ion of the English Court. " I was pleased last winter to 
find you nourishing in favour, and highly esteemed by all 
men. Yet, to conceal nothing, it appeared to me that the 
manners of your Court are less manly than I could wish ; 
and the majority of your great folk struck me as more 
eager to gain applause by affected courtesy, than by such 
virtues as benefit the commonwealth, and are the chief 
ornament of noble minds and high-born personages. It 
grieved me then, as also your other friends, that you 
should waste the flower of your youth in such trifles. I 
began to fear lest your excellent disposition should at last 
be blunted, lest you should come by habit to care for 
things which soften and emasculate our mind." 

We have already seen that Sidney was not otherwise 
than himself alive to these dangers, and that he chafed 
continually at the " expense of spirit in a waste" of frivoli- 
ties. As a couplet in one of his occasional poems puts it — 

" Greater was the shepherd's treasure, 
Than this false, fine, courtly pleasure." 

From the same poem we learn that his friendship for 
Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer continued to be his main- 
stay at the Court; and when I enter upon the details of 
his literary career, it will become apparent that much of 
his time had been already spent with these and other cul- 
tivated gentlefolk in the prosecution of serious studies. 
For the present it seems better not to interrupt the history 
of his external life. 



CHAPTER IV. 



The years 1579 and 1580 are of importance in the bi- 
ography of Sidney, owing to the decided part he took in 
the discussion of the French match. Elizabeth's former 
suitor, d'Alencon, now bore the title of Duke of Anjou, 
by his brother Henri's accession to the throne of France. 
Time had cast a decent veil over the memory of St. Bar- 
tholomew, and Anjou was now posing as the protector of 
national liberties in the Low Countries. He thought the 
opportunity good for renewing negotiations with the 
Queen of England. That the Court of the Valois was 
anxious to arrange the marriage admits of no doubt. The 
sums of money spent in presents and embassies render 
this certain, for Catherine de' Medici and her sons were 
always in pecuniary difficulties. They could not afford to 
throw gold away on trifles. 

Elizabeth showed a strong inclination to accept the 
duke's proposal. She treated his envoy, Du Simiers, with 
favour, and kept up a brisk correspondence with Paris. 
The match, however, was extremely unpopular with the 
English people. In the autumn of 1579 there appeared a 
pamphlet entitled : " The Discovery of the Gaping Gulf, 
whereinto England is like to be swallowed, by a French 
marriage, if the Lord forbid not the Banns, by letting her 



60 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Majesty see the Sin and Punishment thereof." This suf- 
ficed to indicate the temper of the best part of the nation, 
the Protestants, who saw their religious and political liber- 
ties in danger. Stubbs and Page, the author and the 
printer of this " lewd and seditious book," as it was termed 
by royal proclamation, were each condemned to lose the 
right hand. Stubbs, when the hangman had performed 
his office, waved his hat with the left hand, crying " God 
save the Queen I" Page pointed to his bloody hand upon 
the ground, and said, "There lies the hand of a true Eng- 
lishman !" 

At Court opinion was divided. Elizabeth's flatterers, 
. with Oxford at their head, declared themselves loudly in fa- 
vour of the match. Leicester opposed it; butDu Sinners' 
opportune discovery of the secret marriage with Lady 
Essex ruined his credit. The great earl had to retire in 
disgrace. Camden relates that the queen banished him 
until further notice to Greenwich Castle. Fulke Greville 
says " the French faction reigning had cast aspersions upon 
his (Sidney's) uncle of Leicester, and made him, like a 
wise man (under colour of taking physic) voluntarily be- 
come prisoner in his chamber." Whether his retirement 
was compulsory or voluntary matters little. For the time 
he lost his influence, and was unable to show his face at 
Court. Thus Philip who had already elected to "join 
with the weaker party and oppose this torrent," found 
himself at the moment of his greatest need deprived of 
the main support which powerful connections gave him. 

Greville has devoted a chapter to his action in this mat- 
ter, analysing with much detail the reasons which moved 
him to oppose the queen's inclination. It is not necessary 
to report his friend's view of the case, since I shall shortly 
have to present an abstract of the famous document which 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 61 

Sidney drew up for Elizabeth's perusal. Yet the exordium 
to this chapter may be quoted, as representing in brief his 
position at the close of 1579. 

« The next doubtful stage he had to act upon (howsoever it may 
seem private) was grounded upon a public and specious proposition 
of marriage between the late famous queen and the Duke of Anjou. 
With which current, although he saw the great and wise men of the 
time suddenly carried down, and every one fishing to catch the queen's 
humour in it"; yet when he considered the difference of years, person, 
education, state, and religion between them; and then called to mind 
the success of our former alliances with the French; he found many 
reasons to make question whether it would prove poetical or real on 
their part And if real, whether the balance swayed not unequally, 
by addin- much to them and little to his sovereign. The duke's great- 
ness being only name and possibility ; and both these either to wither 
or to be maintained at her cost. Her state, again, in hand ; and 
thou-h royally sufficient to satisfy that queen's princely and moder- 
ate desires or expenses, yet perchance inferior to bear out those 
mixed designs into which his ambition or necessities might entice or 
draw her." 

It came to pass, through Leicester's disgrace, that Philip 
stood almost alone at Court as the resolute opponent of 
the French faction. The profligate and unscrupulous Earl 
of Oxford, now foremost in the queen's favour, was carrying 
his head aloft, boastful of his compliance with her wishes, 
and counting doubtless on the highest honours when the 
match should be completed. An accident brought the 
two champions of the opposed parties into personal col- 
lision. One of Languet's letters enables us to fix the date 
of the event in September 1579, and Greville's minute ac- 
count of the same is so curious that I shall transcribe it 
without further comment. 

« Thus stood the Court at that time ; and thus stood this ingenuous 
spirit in it. If dangerously in men's opinions who are curious of the 



62 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

present, and in it rather to do craftily than well : yet, I say, that 
princely heart of hers was a sanctuary unto him ; and as for the peo- 
ple, in whom many times the lasting images of worth are preferred 
before the temporary visions of art or favour, he could not fear to suf- 
fer any thing there, which would not prove a kind of trophy to him. 
... In this freedom of heart, being one day at tennis, a peer of this 
realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the prince's 
favour, abruptly came into the tennis - court ; and, speaking out of 
these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that which he 
could not legally command. When, by the encounter of a steady ob- 
ject, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great lord) not re- 
spected by this princely spirit, he grew to expostulate more roughly. 
The returns of which style coming still from an understanding heart, 
that knew what was due to itself and what it ought to others, seemed 
(through the mists of my lord's passion, swollen with the wind of this 
faction then reigning) to provoke in yielding. Whereby, the less 
amazement or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the 
more shadows this great lord's own mind was possessed with ; till at 
last with rage (which is ever ill-disciplined) he commands them to de- 
part the court. To this Sir Philip temperately answers ; that if his 
lordship had been pleased to express desire in milder characters, per- 
chance he might have led out those that he should now find would 
not be driven out with any scourge of fury. This answer (like a bel- 
lows) blowing up the sparks of excess already kindled, made my lord 
scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of puppy. In which progress 
of heat, as the tempest grew more and more vehement within, so did 
their hearts breathe out their perturbations in a more loud and shrill 
accent. The French Commissioners unfortunately had that day au- 
dience in those private galleries whose windows looked into the ten- 
nis-court. They instantly drew all to this tumult : every sort of quar- 
rels sorting well with their humours, especially this. Which Sir 
Philip perceiving, and rising with an inward strength by the prospect 
of a mighty faction against him, asked my lord with a loud voice that 
wdiich he heard clearly enough before. Who (like an echo that still 
multiplies by reflexions) repeated this epithet of puppy the second 
time. Sir Philip, resolving in one answer to conclude both the atten- 
tive hearers and passionate actor, gave my lord a lie, impossible (as he 
averred) to be retorted ; in respect all the world knows, puppies are 
gotten by dogs and children by men. 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 63 

" Hereupon these glorious inequalities of fortune in his lordship were 
put to a kind of pause by a precious inequality of nature in this gen- 
tleman ; so that they both stood silent a while, like a dumb show in 
a tragedy ; till Sir Philip, sensible of his own wrong, the foreign and 
factious spirits that attended, and yet even in this question between 
him and his superior tender of his country's honour, with some words 
of sharp accent led the way abruptly out of the tennis-court ; as if so 
unexpected an incident were not fit to be decided in that place. 
Whereof the great lord making another sense, continues his play, 
without any advantage of reputation, as by the standard of humours 
in those times it was conceived." 

Thus the Earl of Oxford called Sidney a puppy ; and Sid- 
ney gave him the lie. It was judged inevitable that the for- 
mer would send a challenge and a duel would ensue. But 
Oxford delayed to vindicate his honour. The Lords of the 
Council intervened, and persuaded the queen to effect a 
reconciliation. She pointed out to Sidney that he owed 
deference to a peer of the realm. " He besought her Maj- 
esty to consider that although he were a great lord by 
birth, alliance, and grace ; yet he was no lord over him." 
As free men and gentlemen the earl and himself were 
equals, except in the matter of precedency. Moreover, he 
reminded Elizabeth that it had been her father's policy to 
shield the gentry from the oppression of the grandees, in 
the wise opinion that the Crown would gain by using the 
former as a balance to the power and ambition of the lat- 
ter. But having stated his case, he seems to have deferred 
to her wishes. We do not hear that apologies were made 
on either side. The matter, however, dropped ; Oxford so 
far retaining his resentment that Sidney's friends believed 
he entertained a scheme for his assassination. 

After reading this passage, we may remember with what 
spirit on a former occasion Philip gave the cut direct to 
Ormond. It is also interesting to compare his carriage 



64 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

upon both occasions with that of his nephew, the Viscount 
Plsle, who bearded James' favourite, James Hay, at that 
time Viscount Doncaster, in his own chamber. A detailed 
account of this incident, written by Lord l'lsle in vindica- 
tion of his honour, is printed among the Sidney papers. 
It casts valuable light upon the manners of the English 
Court, and illustrates the sturdy temper of the Sidney 
breed. 

Philip contrived apparently to keep the queen's good- 
will until the beginning of 1580; for she accepted his 
present of a crystal cup on New Year's Day. But his po- 
sition at Court was difficult. Oxford, it was commonly be- 
lieved, had planned his murder; and being an Italianated 
Englishman — in other words, a devil incarnate — he may 
well have entertained some project of the sort. As the 
avowed champion of the opposition, wielding a pen with 
which no man could compete, Sidney thought the time had 
now come to bring matters to an issue by plain utterance. 
Therefore he drew up a carefully-prepared memorial, set- 
ting forth in firm but most respectful language those argu- 
ments which seemed to him decisive against the French 
match. This he presented to Elizabeth early in 1580. 
Immediately after its perusal, she began to show her re- 
sentment, and Philip, like his uncle, found it convenient to 
leave the Court. His retreat was Wilton, where he re- 
mained in privacy for seven months. 

I have elsewhere remarked that Sidney showed his pow- 
ers as a thinker and prose-writer nowhere more eminently 
than in documents, presenting a wide survey of facts, mar- 
shalling a series of arguments, combining the prudence of 
a statesman and the cunning of an orator. This memorial 
to the queen is a gem in its own species of composition. 
It well deserves the high praise which has been given it as 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND « THE ARCADIA;' 65 

" at once the most eloquent and the most courageous piece 
of that nature which the age can boast. Every important 
view of the subject is comprised in this letter, which is 
long, but at the same time so condensed in style and so 
skilfully compacted as to matter that it well deserves to 
be read entire; and must lose materially either by abridg- 
ment or omission." In it Sidney appeals to what Fulke 
Greville quaintly calls " that princely heart of hers which 
was a sanctuary unto him." He enters the sanctuary with 
reverence, and stands alone there, pleading like a servant 
before his mistress. He speaks to Elizabeth in the char- 
acter of a simple gentleman and loyal subject, relying on 
no support of party, nor representing himself as the mouth- 
piece of an indignant nation. This independent attitude 
gives singular lucidity and beauty to his appeal. It is the 
grave but modest warning of a faithful squire to his liege 
lady in the hour of danger. Although extracts can do but 
scanty justice to the merits of Sidney's oratory, I must 
present such specimens as may serve as samples of his 
English style and display his method of exposition. He 
begins as follows: — 

" Most Feared and Beloved, Most Sweet and Gracious Sovereign 
— To seek out excuses of this my boldness, and to arm the acknowl- 
edging of a fault with reasons for it, might better show I knew I did 
amiss, than any way diminish the attempt, especially in your judgment ; 
who being able to discern lively into the nature of the thing done, it 
were folly to hope, by laying on better colours, to make it more ac- 
ceptable. Therefore, carrying no other olive branch of intercession, 
than the laying of myself at your feet ; nor no other insinuation, ei- 
ther for attention or pardon, but the true vowed sacrifice of unfeigned 
love ; I will, in simple and direct terms (as hoping they shall only 
come to your merciful eyes), set down the overflowing of my mind in 
this most important matter, importing, as I think, the continuance of 
your safety ; and as I know, the joys of my life. And because my 
4 



66 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

words (I confess shallow, but coming from the deep well-spring of 
most loyal affection) have delivered to your most gracious ear, what is 
the general sum of my travelling thoughts therein ; I will now but 
only declare, what be the reasons that make me think, that the mar- 
riage with Monsieur will be unprofitable unto you ; then will I an- 
swer the objection of those fears, which might procure so violent a 
refuge." 

Having finished these personal explanations, he proceeds 
to show that the French marriage must be considered from 
a double point of view, first as regarding the queen's estate, 
and secondly as touching her person. Her real power as 
"an absolute born, and accordingly respected princess," 
rests upon the affection of her subjects, who are now di- 
vided between Protestants and Catholics. The former, 

"As their souls live by your happy government, so are they your 
chief, if not your sole, strength : these, howsoever the necessity of hu- 
man life makes them lack, yet can they not look for better conditions 
than presently they enjoy : these, how their hearts will be galled, if 
not aliened, when they shall see you take a husband, a Frenchman 
and a Papist, in whom (howsoever fine wits may find farther dealings 
or painted excuses) the very common people well know this, that he 
is the son of a Jezebel of our age : that his brother made oblation of 
his own sister's marriage, the easier to make massacres of our breth- 
ren in belief : that he himself, contrary to his promise, and all grate- 
fulness, having his liberty and principal estate by the Hugonot's 
means, did sack La Charite, and utterly spoil them with fire and 
sword. This, I say, even at first sight, gives occasion to all, truly re- 
ligious, to abhor such a master, and consequently to diminish much 
of the hopeful love they have long held to you." 

The Catholics are discontented and disaffected. They will 
grasp easily at any chance of a revolution in religion and 
the State ; and to such folk the French match is doubtless 
acceptable, not as producing good to the commonwealth, 
but as offering them the opportunity of change. 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 67 

" If then the affectionate side have their affections weakened, and 
the discontented have a gap to utter their discontent, I think it will 
seem an ill preparative for the patient (I mean .your estate) to a great 
sickness." 

From these general reflections upon the state of parties 
in England, Sidney passes to a consideration of the Duke 
of Anjou's personal qualities. The following paragraph is 
marked by skilful blending of candour with reserve. Eliz- 
abeth had declared a special partiality for the French prince. 
It is her subject's duty to paint him as inconstant, restless 
in ambition, uncertain in his affections, swayed by light- 
brained and factious counsellors, greedy of power at any 
cost. His profession of the Catholic faith renders him a 
dangerous tool in the hands of disaffected English Papists. 
His position as next heir to the French Crown makes him 
an inconvenient consort for the queen of Great Britain. It 
is not likely that a man of his temper and pretensions 
should put up with a subordinate place in his wife's king- 
dom. And why, asks Sidney, has Elizabeth set her heart 
upon a marriage so fraught with dangers ? " Often have I 
heard you with protestation say no private pleasure nor 
self-affection could lead you to it." Is it because she looks 
forward to the bliss of children ? If so she may marry 
where the disadvantages are less. But she has herself al- 
leged that she is moved by " fear of standing alone in re- 
spect to foreign dealings," and also by " doubt of contempt 
in them from whom you should have respect." These two 
points, since they bias the queen's mind, have to be sepa- 
rately entertained. Leagues are usually cemented by the 
desires or the fears of the contracting parties. What pub- 
lic desires have Elizabeth and the duke in common ? 

"He of the Romish religion; and if he be a man, must needs have 
that man-like property to desire that all men be of his mind : you the 



68 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

erector and defender of the contrary, and the only sun that dazzleth 
their eyes: he French, and desiring to make France great ; your Maj- 
esty English, and desiring nothing less than that France should not 
grow great : he, both by his own fancy and his youthful governors, 
embracing all ambitious hopes ; having Alexander's image in his head, 
but perhaps evil-painted : your Majesty with excellent virtue taught 
what you should hope, and by no less wisdom what you may hope ; 
with a council renowned over all Christendom for their well-tempered 
minds, having set the utmost of their ambition in your favor, and the 
study of their souls in your safety." 

The interests and the dangers of France and England are 
so diverse that these realms have no fears in common to 
unite them. Elizabeth, therefore, can expect nothing but 
perplexity in her foreign dealings from the match. Is it 
reasonable that she should hope to secure the affection of 
her subjects, and to guard herself against their contempt, by 
marriage with a Frenchman ? Can she be ignorant that 
she is the idol of her people ? It is indeed true that the 
succession is uncertain through lack of heirs of her body : 

" But in so lineal a monarchy, wherever the infants suck the love 
of their rightful prince, who would leave the beams of so fair a sun 
for the dreadful expectation of a divided company of stars? Virtue 
and justice are the only bonds of people's love ; and as for that point, 
many princes have lost their crowns whose own children were mani- 
fest successors ; and some that had their own children used as in- 
struments of their ruin ; not that I deny the bliss of children, but 
only to show religion and equity to be of themselves sufficient stays." 

It may be demurred that scurrilous libels have been vent- 
ed against her Majesty, proving some insubordination in 
her subjects. She ought, however, to " care little for the 
barking of a few curs." Honest Englishmen regard such 
attacks upon her dignity as blasphemous. 

"No, no, most excellent lady, do not raze out the impression you 
have made in such a multitude of hearts ; and let not the scum of 



iv.] TIIE FRENCH MATCH AND " THE ARCADIA." 69 

such vile minds bear any witness against your subjects' devotions. 
The only means of avoiding contempt are love and fear ; love, as you 
have by divers means sent into the depth of their souls, so if any- 
thing can stain so true a form, it must be the trimming yourself not 
in your own likeness, but in new colours unto them." 

In other words, Sidney means that the Queen's proposed 
course will alienate instead of confirming the affections of 
the nation. He then passes to his peroration, which I shall 
quote in full as a fair specimen of his eloquence : — 

" Since then it is dangerous for your state, as well because by in- 
ward weakness (principally caused by division) it is fit to receive 
harm ; since to your person it can be no way comfortable, you not 
desiring marriage; and neither to person nor estate he is to bring 
any more good than anybody ; but more evil he may, since the causes 
that should drive you to this are either fears of that which cannot 
happen, or by this means cannot be prevented ; I do with most hum- 
ble heart say unto your Majesty (having assayed this dangerous help) 
for your standing alone, you must take it for a singular honour God 
hath done you, to be indeed the only protector of his Church ; and 
yet in worldly respects your kingdom very sufficient so to do, if you 
make that religion upon which you stand, to carry the only strength, 
and have abroad those that still maintain the same course ; who as 
long as they may be kept from utter falling, your Majesty is sure 
enough from your mightiest enemies. As for this man, as long as he 
is but Monsieur in might, and a Papist in profession, he neither can 
nor will greatly shield you ; and if he get once to be king, his defence 
will be like Ajax's shield, which rather weighed them down than de- 
fended those that bare it. Against contempt, if there be any, which 
I will never believe, let your excellent virtues of piety, justice, and 
liberality daily, if it be possible, more and more shine. Let such par- 
ticular actions be found out (which be easy as I think to be done) by 
which you may gratify all the hearts of your people. Let those in 
whom you find trust, and to whom you have committed trust in your 
weighty affairs be held up in the eyes of your subjects. Lastly, do- 
ing as you do, you shall be, as you be, the example of princes, the or- 
nament of this age, and the most excellent fruit of your progenitors, 



70 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

and the perfect mirror of your posterity. — Your Majesty's faithful, 
humble, and obedient subject, P. Sydney." 

In the early spring of 1580 Sidney went to stay at Wil- 
ton, and remained there during the summer. His sister, 
the Countess of Pembroke, for whom Jonson wrote the fa- 
mous epitaph, and whom Spenser described as 

" The gentlest shepherdess that lives this day, 
And most resembling both in shape and spright 
Her brother dear," 

was united to him by the tenderest bonds of affection and 
by common literary interests. Good judges, among whom 
Jonson may be reckoned, valued her poetry at least as high 
as Philip's; and this opinion is confirmed by what remains 
to us of her compositions. The accent of deep and pas- 
sionate feeling which gives force to some of the Astrophel 
and Stella sonnets, is indeed lacking to her verse. But if 
we are right in believing that only the first forty-two psalms 
in their joint translation belong to him, her part in that 
work exhibits the greater measure of felicity. It was appar- 
ently upon this visit to Wilton that the brother and sister 
began to render the Psalms of David into various lyrical 
metres. After the Vulgate and the Prayer-book all trans- 
lations of the Psalms, even those done by Milton, seem tame 
and awkward. Nor can I except the Sidneys from this 
criticism. In an essay, then, which must of necessity be 
economical of space, I shall omit further notice of this ver- 
sion. The opportunity, however, is now given for digress- 
ing from Philip's biography to the consideration of his 
place and achievements in English literature. 

It is of importance to bear steadily in mind the date of 
Sidney's birth in order to judge correctly of his relation to 
predecessors and successors. Wyatt, Surrey, Sackville, and 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH ANI> "THE ARCADIA." 71 

Norton had already acclimatised Italian forms of poetry 
and classical principles of metre upon English soil. But 
very little of first-rate excellence can be referred to this pe- 
riod of our Renaissance. A form of the sonnet peculiar 
to English literature, and blank verse, destined to become 
its epic and dramatic metre, were the two chief results of 
these earliest innovating experiments. Fulke Greville, him- 
self no mean poet, was born in 1554, the same year as Sid- 
ney ; Raleigh had been born in 1552; Spenser and Lyly 
in 1553 ; Drayton followed in 1563 ; Shakespeare and Mar- 
lowe in 1564; Donne not till 1573, and Jonson one year 
later yet; Wyatt and Surrey were both dead some while 
before Sidney saw the light ; and Sackville, though he still 
lived, was not much occupied with literature. It will there- 
fore be seen that he belonged to that intermediate group of 
writers, of whom Spenser was the greatest, and who pre- 
ceded the brilliant burst of genius in the last decade of 
the sixteenth century. It was as the morning star of an 
unexampled day of lyric and dramatic splendour that his 
contemporaries hailed him. 

In the year 1578 Philip attended Queen Elizabeth on one 
of her progresses when she stayed at Audley End, and there 
received the homao-e of some Cambridge scholars. Among 
these came Gabriel Harvey, a man of character and parts, 
but of no distinguished literary talent. He was what we 
now should call a doctrinaire ; yet he possessed so tough a 
personality as to exercise considerable influence over his 
contemporaries. Harvey enthusiastically declared himself 
for the remodelling of English metres on the classic meth- 
od. The notion was not new. Ascham, in the School- 
master, pointed out " how our English tongue in avoiding 
barbarous rhyming may as well receive right quantity of 
syllables and true order of versifying as either Greek or 



72 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Latin, if a cunning man have it in handling." He quoted 
Bishop Watson's hexameters in proof of this proposition : — 

" All travellers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses 
For that he knew many men's manners and saw many cities." 

Yet his good sense saved him from the absurdities into 
which Stanyhurst, the translator of the Aeneid, fell when 
he attempted Virgil in a " rude and beggarly " modern im- 
itation of the Latin rhythm. Ascham summed the ques- 
tion up in a single sentence, prophetic of the future course 
of English versification. " Although Carmen Hexametrum 
doth rather trot and hobble than run smoothly in our Eng- 
lish tongue, yet I am sure our English tongue will receive 
Carmen Iambicum as naturally as either Greek or Latin." 
Harvey was not so finely gifted as Ascham to perceive the 
native strength and weakness of our language. He could 
see no reason why the hexameter should not flourish, and 
wrote verses, which, forgrotesqueness, may pass muster with 
the most " twitching and hopping " of their kind. Robert 
Greene, who also tried his hand at the new style, composed 
smoother but more insipid numbers in the eclogue of Alex- 
is. But Harvey, as I have said, exercised the influence of 
an imperious personality; and one of his friends was Ed- 
mund Spenser. Through Harvey, Sidney became acquaint- 
ed with Spenser; and it is well known that the latter ded- 
icated The Shepherd's Calendar to him in 1579. The 
publication was anonymous. The dedication ran as fol- 
lows : — " To the noble and virtuous gentleman, most worthy 
of all titles, both of learning and chivalry, Master Philip 
Sidney." The envoy opened with these charming trip- 
lets : — 

" Go, little book ! thyself present, 
As child whose parent is unkent, 
To him that is the president 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND " THE ARCADIA." 73 

Of nobleness and chivalry ; 
And if that envy bark at thee, 
As sure it will, for succour flee 
Under the shadow of his wing ; 
And, asked who thee forth did bring, 
A shepherd's swain, say, did thee sing, 
All as his straying flock he fed ; 
And when his honour has thee read 
Crave pardon for thy hardihead." 

In the midst, then, of his Court life Sidney made friends 
with Harvey and with Spenser. He associated his dearer 
intimates, Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer, in the same 
companionship. And thus a little academy, formed ap- 
parently upon the Italian model, came into existence. Its 
critical tendency was indicated by the name Areopagus, 
given it perhaps in fun by Spenser; and its practical ob- 
ject was the reformation of English poetry upon Italian 
and classical principles. Unless I am mistaken, no mem- 
ber of the club applied its doctrines so thoroughly in prac- 
tice as Sidney. It is true that Harvey wished to have it 
inscribed upon his grave that he had fostered hexameters 
on English soil. But in the history of our poetical litera- 
ture Harvey occupies no place of honor. It is also true 
that Spenser elaborated some lame hexameters. But his 
genius detected the imposture; he wrote to Harvey, point- 
ing out the insurmountable difficulties of English accent, 
and laughing at the metre as being "either like a lame 
gosling that draweth up one leg after, or like a lame dog 
that holdeth one leg up." 

Sidney, with his usual seriousness, took the search after 
a reformed style of English poetry in earnest. He made 
experiments in many kinds and various metres, which are 
now preserved to us embedded in the text of his Arcadia. 
Those poems form the most solid residuum from the exer- 
4* 



14 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

cises of the Areopagus. They are not very valuable ; but 
they are interesting as showing what the literary temper 
of England was, before the publication of the Faery Queen 
and the overwhelming series of the romantic dramas de- 
cided the fate of English poetry. Like Gorboduc and 
other tragedies in the manner of Seneca, these " reformed 
verses" were doomed to be annihilated by the strong blast 
of the national genius. But they have their importance 
for the student of crepuscular intervals between the dark- 
ness and the day-spring ; and it must not be forgotten that 
their author did not intend them for the public eye. While 
studying and using these verses as documents for the elu- 
cidation of literary evolution, let us therefore bear in mind 
that we are guilty of an indiscretion, and are prying on 
the privacy of a gentleman who never sought the suffrage 
of the vulgar. 

It was at Wilton, then, in 1580, that Sidney began the 
Arcadia in compliance with his sister's request. The dedi- 
catory epistle teaches us in what spirit we ought to ap- 
proach the pages which he left unfinished, and which were 
given to the press after his decease: 

"Here now have you, most dear, and most worthy to be most dear 
lady, this idle work of mine; which, I fear, like the spider's web, will 
be thought fitter to be swept away than worn to any other purpose. 
For my part, in very truth, as the cruel fathers among the Greeks 
were wont to do to the babes they would not foster, I could well find 
it in my heart to cast out in some desert of forgetfulness this child 
which I am loath to father. But you desired me to do it, and your 
desire to my heart is an absolute commandment. Now it is done 
only for you, only to you. If you keep it to yourself, or to such 
friends who will weigh error in the balance of good-will, I hope for 
the father's sake it will be pardoned, perchance made much of, though 
in itself it have deformities. For, indeed, for severer eyes it is not, 
being a trifle, and that triflingly handled." 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 75 

These words were doubtless penned long after the first 
sheets of the Arcadia. That they were sincere is proved 
by Sidney's dying request to have the manuscript de- 
stroyed. He goes on to say that " his chief safety shall 
be the not walking abroad ; and his chief protection the 
using of your name, which, if much good- will do not de- 
ceive me, is worthy to be a sanctuary for a greater offend- 
er." We have, therefore, the strongest possible security 
that this famous Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, this " charm 
of ages," as Young pompously calls it, which passed through 
seventeen editions before 1674, was intended by its author 
only for his sister and a friendly circle. Yet, though we 
must approach it now like eavesdroppers, we may read in 
it, better perhaps than elsewhere, those tendencies of Eng- 
lish literature which were swallowed up and trampled over 
by the legionaries of the great dramatic epoch. 

It is not improbable that Lyly's Euphues, which first 
saw the light in 1579, suggested to Sidney the notion of 
writing a romance in a somewhat similar style. He did 
not, however, catch the infection of Lyly's manner; and 
the Arcadia, unlike Euphues, has no direct didactic pur- 
pose. Critics, soon after its appearance, imagined that they 
could discern in its structure hidden references to the main 
events of the age. But this may be considered a delusion, 
based upon the prevalent tendency to seek allegories in 
works of art and fancy — the tendency to which Tasso 
bowed when he supplied a key to the moralities of the 
Gerusalemme, and which induced Spenser to read esoteric 
meanings into the Orlando Furioso. Sidney had clearly 
in mind the Arcadia of Sannazzaro ; he also owed much 
to Montemayor's Diana and the Greek romantic novelists. 
The style at first is noticeably Italian, as will appear from 
certain passages I mean to quote. After a while it be- 



76 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

comes less idyllic and ornate, and at last it merges into ra- 
pidity of narration. To sustain the manner of the earlier 
pages, which remind us of Boccaccio and Sannazzaro, 
throughout the labyrinthine intricacies of the fable, would 
have been tedious. Perhaps, too, we may connect the al- 
teration of literary tone with Sidney's departure from 
Wilton to the Court. 

I shall not attempt a complete analysis of the Arcadia. 
The main story is comparatively slender; but it is so com- 
plicated by digressions and episodes that a full account of 
the tangled plot would take up too much space, and would 
undoubtedly prove wearisome to modern readers. Horace 
Walpole was not far wrong when he asserted that " the 
patience of a young virgin in love cannot now wade 
through" that jungle of pastoral, sentimental, and heroical 
adventures. A brief outline of the tale, together with some 
specimens of Sidney's descriptive and sententious styles, 
must, however, here be given, since it is not very likely 
that any readers of my book will be impelled to turn the 
pages of the original. 

Musidorus, Prince of Thessalia, and Pyrocles, Prince of 
Macedon, were cousins. An affection, such as bound the 
knights of elder Greek romance together, united them even 
more than the nearness of their blood. Pyrocles, being the 
elder, taught his friend all that he knew of good, and brave, 
and gracious. Musidorus learned willingly ; and thus the 
pair grew up to manhood in perfect love, twin flowers of 
gentleness and chivalry. When the story opens the two 
heroes have just been wrecked on the Laconian coast. A 
couple of shepherds, Claius and Strephon, happened to be 
pacing the sea-shore at that moment. They noticed a young 
man floating on a coffer, which the waves washed gradually 
landward. He was " of so goodly shape and well-pleasing 



iv. J THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 77 

favour that one would think death had in him a lovely 
countenance ; and that, though he were naked, nakedness 
was to him an apparel." This youth proved to be Musi- 
dorus. Pyrocies meanwhile remained upon the wreck; 
and, while the shepherds were in the act to rescue him, he 
was carried off by pirates under the eyes of his sorrowing 
comrade. There was nothing for it but to leave him to 
his fate ; and Musidorus, after a moment of wild despair, 
yielded to the exhortations of the good shepherds, who 
persuaded him to journey with them to the house of a 
just and noble gentleman named Kalander. The way 
was long; but, after two days' march, it brought them 
to Arcadia. The description of that land is justly cele- 
brated. 

"The third day after, in the time that the morning did strew roses 
and violets in the heavenly floor, against the coming of the sun, the 
nightingales (striving one with the other which could in most dainty 
variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow) made them put off their 
sleep ; and rising from under a tree (which that night had been their 
pavilion), they went on their journey, which by-and-by welcomed Mu- 
sidorus's eyes (wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia) with delight- 
ful prospects. There were hills which garnished their proud heights 
with stately trees : humble vallies, whose base estate seemed comfort- 
ed with the refreshing of silver rivers : meadows enamelled with all 
sorts of eye-pleasing flowers ; thickets, which being lined with most 
pleasant shade were witnessed so too by the cheerful disposition of 
many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep, feeding with 
sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating outcry craved the 
dam's comfort: here a shepherd's boy piping, as though he should 
never be old : there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal sing- 
ing ; and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and 
her hands kept time to her voice-music. As for the houses of the 
country (for many houses came under their eye), they were all scat- 
tered, no two being one by the other, and yet not so far off as that it 
barred mutual succour ; a show, as it were, of an accompanable soli- 
tariness and of a civil wildness." 



V8 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

In due course of time they arrived at the house of Ka- 
lander, where Musidorus was hospitably received. 

" The house itself was built of fair and strong stone, not affecting 
so much any extraordinary kind of fineness as an honourable repre- 
senting of a firm stateliness." " The servants not so many in number 
as cleanly in apparel and serviceable in behaviour, testifying even in 
their countenances that their master took as well care to be served as 
of them that did serve." 

Perhaps Sidney, when he penned these sentences, thought 
of Penshurst. At any rate they remind us of Jonson's 
lines upon that venerable country seat. The pleasance, also, 
had the same charm of homeliness and ancient peace : — 

" The backside of the house was neither field, garden, nor orchard ; 
or rather it was both field, garden, and orchard : for as soon as the 
descending of the stairs had delivered them down, they came into a 
place cunningly set with trees of the most taste-pleasing fruits : but 
scarcely had they taken that into their consideration, but that they 
were suddenly stepped into a delicate green ; of each side of the green 
a thicket, and behind the thickets again new beds of flowers, which 
being under the trees, the trees were to them a pavilion, and they to 
the trees a mosaical floor, so that it seemed that art therein would 
needs be delightful by counterfeiting his enemy error and making or- 
der in confusion." 

Here Musidorus sojourned some while, until he happened 
to hear that his host's son, Clitophon, had been taken pris- 
oner by the Helots, who were now in revolt against their 
Laconian masters. Musidorus begged permission to go to 
the young man's rescue ; and when he reached the rebels, 
he entered their walled city by a stratagem and began a 
deadly battle in the market-place. The engagement at first 
was general between the Helots and the Arcadians, but at 
length it resolved itself into a single combat, Musidorus at- 
tacking the leader of the Helots with all his might. This 



it.] THE FRENCII MATCH AND " THE ARCADIA." 79 

duel remained for some time equal and uncertain, when 
suddenly the brigand chief threw down his sword, exclaim- 
ing, " What ! hath Palladius forgotten the voice of Dai- 
phantus ?" It should here be said that Pyrocles and Musi- 
dorus had agreed to call each other by these assumed names. 
A joyful recognition of course ensued. Pyrocles related 
the series of events by which he had been forced to head 
the rebels, after being captured by them. Clitophon was 
released, and all returned together to Arcadia. 

At this point the love intrigue, which forms the main 
interest of what Milton called " the vain amatorious poem 
of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia" begins to unfold itself. 
An eccentric sovereign, Basilius, Prince of Arcadia, was 
married to an accomplished and beautiful woman, Gynecia. 
They had two daughters, Pamela the elder, and Philoclea 
the younger, equally matched in loveliness of mind and 
person, yet differing by subtle contrasts of their incompa- 
rable qualities. Basilius, in a fit of jealousy and suspicion, 
had left his palace, and was now residing with his wife 
and daughters in two rustic lodges, deep-embowered by the 
forest. Gynecia, Philoclea, and himself occupied one of 
these retreats. Pamela dwelt in the other, under the care 
of a clownish peasant family, consisting of Dametas, his 
hideous wife Miso, and their still more odious daughter 
Mopsa. It need not be related how Musidorus fell in love 
with Pamela and Pyrocles with Philoclea. In order to be 
near the ladies of their choice, the princes now assumed 
new names and strange disguises. Pyrocles donned Ama- 
zon's attire and called himself Zelmane. Musidorus became 
a shepherd and was known as Dorus. Both contrived to 
win the affections of the princesses, but meanwhile they 
got entangled in embarrassing and dangerous complications. 
Dorus had to feign love for the disgusting Mopsa. Zel- 



80 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

mane was persecuted by the passion of both Basilins and 
Gynecia; Basilius deeming him a woman, Gynecia recog- 
nising a man through his disguise. When Milton con- 
demned the Arcadia as " a book in that hind full of mirth 
and witty, but among religious thoughts and duties not 
worthy to be named, nor to be read at any time without 
due caution," he was assuredly justified by the unpleasant 
situation created for Zelmane. A young man, travestied 
as a girl, in love with a princess, and at the same time har- 
assed by the wanton solicitations of both her father and 
her mother, is, to say the least, a very risky subject for ro- 
mance. Yet Sidney treated it with sufficient delicacy, and 
contrived in the end to bring both Basilius and Gynecia to 
their senses. " Loathsomely loved and dangerously loving," 
Zelmane remained long in this entanglement; but when he 
and Philoclea eventually attained their felicity in marriage, 
both of them concealed Gynecia's error. And she " did, 
in the remnant of her life, duly purchase [their good opin- 
ion] with observing all duty and faith, to the example and 
glory of Greece; so uncertain are mortal judgments, the 
same person most infamous and most famous, and neither 
justly." 

I have dwelt on this part of the story because it antici- 
pates the plots of many Elizabethan dramas which turned 
upon confusions of sex, and to which the custom of boys 
acting female parts lent a curious complexity. If space 
allowed I might also follow the more comic fortunes of 
Dorus, and show how the tale of Amphialus (another lover 
of Philoclea) is interwoven with that of Pyrocles and Musi- 
dorus. This subordinate romance introduces one of the 
longest episodes of the work, when Cecropia, the wicked 
mother of Amphialus, imprisons Zelmane, Philoclea, and 
Pamela together in her castle. It is during this imprison- 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 81 

mcnt that Pamela utters the prayer made famous by the 
fact that Charles I. is supposed to have used it just before 
his execution. I will quote it here at length, both for its 
beauty of style and for the sake of this historical associa- 
tion : — 

" All-seeing Light and Eternal Life of all things, to whom noth- 
ing is either so great that it may resist, or so small that it is con- 
temned ; look upon my misery with Thine eye of mercy, and let Thine 
infinite power vouchsafe to limit out some proportion of deliverance 
unto me, as to Thee shall seem most convenient. Let not injury, 
Lord, triumph over me, and let my faults by Thy hand be corrected, 
and make not mine unjust enemy the minister of Thy justice. But 
yet, my God, if, in Thy wisdom, this be the aptest chastisement for 
my inexcusable folly, if this low bondage be fitted for my over high 
desires, if the pride of my not enough humble heart be thus to be 
broken, Lord, I yield unto Thy will, and joyfully embrace what sor- 
row Thou wilt have me suffer. Only thus much let me crave of Thee : 
let my craving, Lord, be accepted of Thee, since even that proceeds 
from Thee ; let me crave, even by the noblest title which in my great- 
est affliction I may give myself, that I am Thy creature, and by Thy 
goodness, which is Thyself, that Thou wilt suffer some beam of Thy 
majesty so to shine into my mind that it may still depend confidently 
on Thee. Let calamity be the exercise, but not the overthrow of my 
virtue ; let their power prevail, but prevail not to destruction. Let 
my greatness be their prey; let my pain be the sweetness of their re- 
venge; let them, if so it seem good unto Thee, vex me with more and 
more punishment ; but, Lord, let never their wickedness have such 
a hand but that I may carry a pure mind in a pure body." 

Among the papers given to Bishop Juxon by Charles 
upon the scaffold was this prayer, slightly altered in some 
particulars. His enemies made it a cause of reproach 
against him, especially Milton, in a memorable passage of 
" Iconoclastes," from which I have already quoted certain 
phrases. "Who would have imagined," writes the Latin 
secretarv, " so little fear in him of the true all-seeing: Deitv, 



82 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

so little reverence of the Holy Ghost, whose office it is to 
dictate and present our Christian prayers, so little care of 
truth in his last words, or honour to himself or to his friends, 
or sense of his afflictions, or that sad hour which was upon 
him, as immediately before his death to pop into the hand 
of that grave bishop who attended him, as a special relique 
of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from 
the mouth of a heathen woman praying to a heathen god ; 
and that in no serious book, but in the vain amatorious 
poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia ?" Charles' defenders 
pointed out that the papers given to Juxon had been seized 
by the regicides, and accused them of foisting this prayer 
in on purpose to have the opportunity of traducing their 
victim to Puritan England. It is also noticeable that it 
does not appear in the first edition of Eikon BasiliJce, nor 
in Dr. Earl's Latin version of that book. However the case 
may be, Dr. Johnson showed good sense when he wrote: 
" The use of it (the prayer) by adaptation w r as innocent; and 
they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension 
of their malice could contrive what they wanted to ac- 
cuse." 

Pamela's prayer has led me so far away from the intri- 
cacies of Sidney's Arcadia that I shall not return to fur- 
ther analyses of the fable. The chief merits of the book, 
as a whole, seem to be an almost inexhaustible variety of 
incidents, fairly correct character-drawing, purity of feeling, 
abundance of sententious maxims, and great richness of 
colouring in the descriptive passages. Its immense popu- 
larity may be ascribed to the fact that nothing exactly like 
it had appeared in English literature ; for Euphues is by 
no means so romantically interesting or so varied in mate- 
rial, while the novels of Greene are both shorter and more 
monotonous. The chivalrous or heroic incidents are so 



it.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND " THE ARCADIA." 83 

well combined with the sentimental, and these again are so 
prettily set against the pastoral background, that, given an 
appetite for romance of the kind, each reader found some- 
thing to stimulate his curiosity and to provide him with 
amusement. The defects of the Arcadia are apparent ; as, 
for instance, its lack of humour, the extravagance of many 
of its situations, the whimsicality of its conceits, and the 
want of solid human realism in its portraits. These defects 
were, however, no bar to its popularity in the sixteenth cen- 
tury ; nor would they count as such at present were it not, 
as Dr. Zouch pertinently remarks, that " the taste, the man- 
ners, the opinions, the language of the English nation, have 
undergone a very great revolution since the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth." Such a revolution condemns all works which 
fascinated a bygone age, and which are not kept alive by 
humour and by solid human realism, to ever-gradually-deep- 
ening oblivion. 

Before concluding this chapter there is another point of 
view under which the Arcadia must be considered. Sidney 
interspersed its prose with verses, after the model of Sannaz- 
zaro's pastoral, sometimes introducing them as occasion 
suggested into the mouths of his chief personages, and 
sometimes making them the subject of poetical disputes 
between the shepherds of the happy country. Some of 
these poems are among the best which he composed. I 
would cite in particular the beautiful sonnet which begins 
and ends with this line : " My true love hath my heart, and 
I have his ; " and another opening with — " Beauty hath 
force to catch the human sight." But what gives special 
interest to the verses scattered over the pages of Arcadia 
is that in a large majority of them Sidney put in practice 
the theories of the Areopagus. Thus we have English 
hexameters, elegiacs, sapphics, phaleuciacs or hendecasylla- 



84 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

bles, asclepiads, and anacreontics. I will present some 
specimens of each. Here then are hexameters : — • 

"Lady reserved by the heavens to do pastors' company honour, 
Joining your sweet voice to the rural muse of a desert, 
Here you fully do find this strange operation of love, 
How to the woods love runs as well as rides to the palace ; 
Neither he bears reverence to a prince nor pity to beggar, 
But (like a point in midst of a circle) is still of a nearness. 
All to a lesson he draws, neither hills nor caves can avoid him." 

One elegiac couplet will suffice : — 

" Fortune, Nature, Love, long have contended about me, 

Which should most miseries cast on a worm that I am." 

Nor will it be needful to quote more than one sapphic 
stanza : — 

" If mine eyes can speak to do hearty errand, 
Or mine eyes' language she do hap to judge of, 
So that eyes' message be of her received, 
Hope, we do live yet." 

The hendecasyllables, though comparatively easy to write 
in English, hobble in a very painful manner, as thus: — 

"Reason, tell me thy mind, if here be reason, 
In this strange violence to make resistance, 
Where sweet graces erect the stately banner 
Of virtue's regiment, shining in harness." 

So do the asclepiads, which, however, are by no means so 
easy of execution : — 

" sweet woods, the delight of solitariness ! 
how much I do like your solitariness ! 
Where man's mind hath a freed consideration 
Of goodness to receive lovely direction ; 
Where senses do behold the order of heavenly host, 
And wise thoughts do behold what the Creator is." 



iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 85 

The anacreontics, being an iambic measure, come off 
somewhat better, as may be judged by this transcript from 
a famous fragment of Sappho : — 

" My Muse, what ails this ardour ? 
Mine eyes be dim, my limbs shake, 
My voice is hoarse, my throat scorched, 
My tongue to this my roof cleaves, 
My fancy amazed, my thoughts dulled, 
My heart doth ache, my life faints, 
My soul begins to take leave." 

It is obvious from these quotations that what the school 
called "our rude and beggarly rhyming" is not only more 
natural, but also more artistic than their " reformed verse." 
Indeed, it may be said without reserve that Sidney's ex- 
periments in classical metres have no poetical value what- 
soever. They are only interesting as survivals from an 
epoch when the hexameter seemed to have an equal chance 
of survival with the decasyllabic unrhymed iambic. The 
same is true about many of Sidney's attempts to acclima- 
tise Italian forms of verse. Thus we find embedded in the 
Arcadia terza rima and ottava rima, sestines and madrigals, 
a canzone in which the end of each line rhymes with a 
syllable in the middle of the next. So conscientious was 
he in the attempt to reproduce the most difficult Italian 
metres that he even attempted terza rima with sdrucciolo 
or trisyllabic rhymes. I will select an example : — 

" If sunny beams shame heavenly habitation, 
If three-leaved grass seem to the sheep unsavory, 
Then base and sore is Love's most high vocation. 
Or if sheep's cries can help the sun's own bravery, 
Then may I hope my pipe may have ability 
To help her praise who decks me in her slavery." 

But enough of this. It has proved a difficult task to in- 



86 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. iv. 

troduce terza rima at all into English literature; to make 
so exceptionally exacting a species of it as the sdrucciolo 
at all attractive, would almost be beyond the powers of Mr. 
Swinburne. The octave, as handled by Sidney, is passable, 
as will appear from the even flow of this stanza : — 

" While thus they ran a low but levelled race, 
While thus they lived (this was indeed a life !) 
With nature pleased, content with present case, 
Free of proud fears, brave beggary, smiting strife 
Of clime-fall court, the envy-hatching place, 
While those restless desires in great men rife 
To visit folks so low did much disdain, 
This while, though poor, they in themselves did reign." 

Of the sestines I will not speak. That form has always 
seemed to me tedious even in the hands of the most ex- 
pert Italian masters; and Sidney was not the sort of poet 
to add grace to its formality by any sprightliness of treat- 
ment. It should be noticed that some of the songs in the 
Arcadia are put into the mouth of a sad shepherd who is 
Sidney himself. Phillisides (for so he has chosen to Latin- 
ise the first syllables of his Christian and surnames) ap- 
pears late in the romance, and prepares us to expect the 
higher poetry of Astro})hel and Stella. 



CHAPTER V. 

LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 

While Philip was in retirement at Wilton two events of 
interest happened. His nephew, William Herbert, saw the 
light upon the 28th of April ; and Edmund Spenser left 
England for Ireland as secretary to the new Viceroy, Lord 
Grey of Wilton. The birth of the future Earl of Pem- 
broke forcibly reminds us of Sidney's position in the his- 
tory of English literature. This baby in the cradle was 
destined to be Shakespeare's friend and patron ; possibly 
also to inspire the sonnets which a publisher inscribed in 
Shakespeare's name to Master W. H. We are wont to re- 
gard those enigmatical compositions as the product of 
Shakespeare's still uncertain manhood. But William Her- 
bert was yet a child when his uncle Philip's life-work end- 
ed. Astrophel and Stella had circulated among its au- 
thor's private friends for at least four years when Zutphen 
robbed England of her poet-hero. At that date little Her- 
bert, for whom Shakespeare subsequently wrote the lines — 

" Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all ; 
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before ?" — 

this little Herbert was but in his seventh year. 

It is also possible, but not probable, that, while Philip 
was awav in Wiltshire, his half-affianced bride, the daugh- 



88 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

ter of the Earl of Essex, gave her hand to another suitor. 
Her guardian, the Earl of Huntingdon, wrote upon the 10th 
of March, in 1580, to Lord Burleigh, that he considered 
Lord Rich " a proper gentleman, and one in years very fit 
for my Lady Penelope Devereux, if, with the favour and 
liking of her Majesty, the matter might be brought to 
pass." Lord Rich certainly married Penelope Devereux ; 
but whether it was in 1580, or rather in 1581, admits of 
discussion. To fix the exact date of her betrothal is a 
matter of some moment. I must therefore point out that, 
at that time in England, the commencement of the year 
dated officially from March 25. In private correspond- 
ence, however, the 1st of January had already begun to 
mark the opening of a new year. Privately, then, Lord 
Huntingdon's letter may have carried the date, 1580, as we 
understand it; but, officially, it must have been reckoned 
into the year which we call 1581. Now this letter is en- 
dorsed by Burleigh or his secretary, officially, under the 
year 15S0; and, therefore, we have a strong presumption 
in favour of Penelope's not having been engaged to Lord 
Rich until 1581, seeing that the month of March in 1580 
counted then for our month of March in 1581. "When I 
review Astrojyhel and Stella it will appear that I do not at- 
tach very great importance to this question of dates. But 
I think it safer, on the evidence, to place Stella's marriage 
in the spring or summer of 1581. 

Lord Rich was the son of the Lord Chancellor of Eng- 
land, who had lately died, bequeathing to his heir a very 
substantial estate, and a large portion of his own coarse 
temperament. If we may trust the Earl of Devonshire's 
emphatic statement, made some twenty-five years later to 
King James, this marriage was not to the mind of the 
lady. He says that Penelope, " being in the power of her 



v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 89 

friends, was married against her will unto one against 
whom she did protest at the solemnity and ever after ; be- 
tween whom, from the very first day, there ensued con- 
tinual discord, although the same fears that forced her to 
marry constrained her to live with him." I may here re- 
mind my readers of her subsequent history. During her 
husband's lifetime she left him and became the mistress of 
Sir Charles Blount, to whom she bore three children out 
of wedlock He advanced to the peerage with the in- 
herited title of Lord Mountjoy, and was later on created 
Earl of Devonshire ; while Lady Rich, in spite of her 
questionable conduct, received, by patent, the dignity and 
precedence of the most ancient Earldom of Essex. Hav- 
ing been divorced from Lord Rich, she was afterwards at 
liberty to marry her lover; and in 1605 she became the 
Countess of Devonshire. James refused to countenance 
the nuptials. He had tolerated the previous illicit connec- 
tion. But his opinions upon divorce made him regard its 
legalisation with indignant horror. Stella died in 1607 a 
disgraced woman, her rights of wifehood and widowhood 
remaining unrecognised. 

In the course of the summer (1580), Leicester left his 
retirement and returned to Court. It was understood that 
though still not liking the French match, he would in fut- 
ure offer no opposition to the queen's wishes ; and on these 
terms he induced Philip also to make his peace with her 
Majesty. We find him, accordingly, again in London be- 
fore the autumn. Two of the longest private letters from 
his pen may be referred to this period. They are address- 
ed to his brother Robert Sidney, who afterwards became 
Lord Leicester. This young man was then upon his trav- 
els, spending more money than his father's distressed cir- 
cumstances could well afford. Philip sent him supplies, 
5 



90 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

using language of great delicacy and warm brotherly affec- 
tion : " For the money yon have received, assure yourself 
(for it is true) there is nothing I spend so pleaseth me, as 
that which is for you. If ever I have ability, you will find 
it ; if not, yet shall not any brother living be better beloved 
than you of me." "For £200 a year, assure yourself, if 
the estates of England remain, you shall not fail of it; 
use it to your best profit." Where Philip found the 
money may be wondered ; but that he gave it with good 
grace is unquestionable. Probably he received more from 
the queen in allowances than we are aware of; for he 
ranked among the favoured courtiers then known as " pen- 
sioners." As was the fashion of those times, he lectured 
his brother somewhat pompously on how to use the op- 
portunities of the grand tour. Robert was constantly to 
observe the " virtue, passion, and vices" of the foreign 
countries through which he travelled. 

" Even in the Kingdom of China, which is almost as far as the 
Antipodes from us, their good laws and customs are to be learned ; 
but to know their riches and power is of little purpose for us, since 
that can neither advance nor hinder us. But in our neighbouring 
countries, both these things are to be marked, as well the latter, 
which contain things for themselves, as the former, which seek to 
know both those, and how their riches and power may be to us avail- 
able, or otherwise. The countries fittest for both these are those you 
are going into. France is above all other most needful for us to 
mark, especially in the former kind ; next is Spain and the Low 
Countries ; then Germany, which in my opinion excels all others as 
much in the latter consideration, as the other doth in the former, yet 
neither are void of neither ; for as Germany, methinks, doth excel in 
good laws, and well administering of justice, so are we likewise to 
consider in it the many princes with whom we may have league, the 
places of trade, and means to draw both soldiers and furniture thence 
in time of need. So on the other side, as in France and Spain, we are 
principally to mark how they stand towards us both in power and in- 



v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 91 

clination ; so are they not without good and fitting use, even in the 
generality of wisdom to be known. As in France, the courts of par- 
liament, their subaltern jurisdiction, and their continual keeping of 
paid soldiers. In Spain, their good and grave proceedings; their 
keeping so many provinces under them, and by what manner, with 
the true points of honour ; wherein since they have the most open 
conceit, if they seem over curious, it is an easy matter to cut off when 
a man sees the bottom. Flanders likewise, besides the neighbourhood 
with us, and the annexed considerations thereunto, hath divers things 
to be learned, especially their governing their merchants and other 
trades. Also for Italy, we knew not what we have, or can have, to 
do with them, but to buy their silks and wines ; and as for the other 
point, except Venice, whose good laws and customs we can hardly 
proportion to ourselves, because they are quite of a contrary gov- 
ernment ; there is little there but tyrannous oppression, and ser- 
vile yielding to them that have little or no right over them. And 
for the men you shall have there, although indeed some be excel- 
lently learned, yet are they all given to counterfeit learning, as a 
man shall learn among them more false grounds of things than in 
any place else that I know ; for from a tapster upwards, they are all 
discoursers in certain matters and qualities, as horsemanship, weap- 
ons, painting, and such are better there than in other countries ; but 
for other matters, as well, if not better, you shall have them in near- 
er places." 

The second of the two epistles (dated from Leicester 
House, Oct. 18, 1580) contains more personal matter. 
11 Look to your diet, sweet Robin," he says, " and hold up 
your heart in courage and virtue ; truly great part of my 
comfort is in you." And again : " Now, sweet brother, take 
a delight to keep and increase your music ; you will not 
believe what a want I find of it in my melancholy times." 
It appears, then, that Philip, unlike many gentlemen of 
that age, could not touch the lute or teach the " saucy 
jacks" of the virginal to leap in measure. Then follows 
another bit of playful exhortation : " I would by the way 
your worship would learn a better hand ; you write worse 



92 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

than I, and I write evil enough ; once again have a care of 
your diet, and consequently of your complexion ; remem- 
ber Gratior est veniens in pulchro corpore virtus" If Ben 
Jonson was right in what he said of Philip's complexion, 
this advice had its ground in tiresome experience. On the 
subject of manly exercises he has also much to say : " At 
horsemanship, when you exercise it, read Crison Claudio, 
and a book that is called La Gloria del Cavallo, withal 
that you may join the thorough contemplation of it with 
the exercise ; and so shall you profit more in a month than 
others in a year ; and mark the biting, saddling, and cur- 
ing of horses." 

" When you play at weapons, I would have you get thick caps 
and brasers, and play out your play lustily, for indeed ticks and dal- 
liances are nothing in earnest, for the time of the one and the other 
greatly differs ; and use as well the blow as the thrust ; it is good 
in itself, and besides exerciseth your breath and strength, and will 
make you a strong man at the tourney and barriers. First, in any 
case practise the single sword, and then with the dagger; let no day 
pass without an hour or two such exercise ; the rest study, or confer 
diligently, and so shall you come home to my comfort and credit." 

Studies come in for their due share of attention. " Take 
delight likewise in the mathematicals ; Mr. Savile is excel- 
lent in them. I think you understand the sphere ; if you 
do, I care little for any more astronomy in you. Arithme- 
tic and geometry I would wish you were well seen in, so as 
both in matters of number and measure you might have a 
feeling and active judgment. I would you did bear the 
mechanical instruments, wherein the Dutch excel." It may 
be said with reference to this paragraph that Mr. Savile 
was Robert Sidney's travelling governor. The sphere rep- 
resented medieval astronomy. Based upon the traditional 
interpretation of the Ptolemaic doctrine, it lent itself to 



V.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 93 

theoretical disquisitions upon cosmology in general, as well 
as to abstruse speculations regarding the locality of para- 
dise and heaven, the elements, and superhuman existences. 
On the point of style Philip observes : " So you can speak 
and write Latin, not barbarously, I never require great study 
in Ciceronianism, the chief abuse of Oxford, qui dum verba 
sectantur res ipsas negligunt." History being Robert Sid- 
ney's favourite study, his brother discourses on it more at 
large. 

I have quoted thus liberally from Philip's letters to Rob- 
ert Sidney, because of the agreeable light they cast upon 
his character. It is clear they were not penned for perusal 
by the public. " My eyes are almost closed up, overwatched 
with tedious business," says the writer; and his last words 
are, " Lord ! how I have babbled." Yet, though hastily 
put together, and somewhat incoherently expressed, the 
thoughts are of excellent pith ; and one passage upon his- 
tory, in particular, reads like a rough sketch for part of the 
" Defence of Poesy." 

After weighing the unaffected words of brotherly coun- 
sel and of affectionate interest which Philip sent across 
the sea to Robert, w r e are prepared for Sir Henry Sidney's 
warm panegyric of his first-born to his second son. He 
had indeed good hopes of Robert; but he built more on 
Philip, as appears from the following sentence in a letter 
to Sir Francis Walsingham : " I having three sons, one of 
excellent good proof, the second of great good' proof, and 
the third not to be despaired of, but very well to be liked." 
Therefore he frequently exhorted Robert to imitate the 
qualities of his " best brother." " Perge, perge, my Robin, 
in the filial fear of God, and in the meanest imagination of 
yourself, and to the loving direction of your most loving 
brother. Imitate his virtues, exercises, studies, and actions. 



94 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

He is the rare ornament of this age, the very formular that 
all well disposed young gentlemen of our Court do form 
also their manners and life by. In truth I speak it with- 
out flattery of him or of myself; he hath the most rare 
virtues that ever I found in any man. Once again I say 
imitate him." And once more, at a later date : " Follow 
your discreet and virtuous brother's rule, who with great 
discretion, to his great commendation, won love, and could 
variously ply ceremony with ceremony." 

The last extant letter of Langnet to Philip was written 
in October of this year. The old man congratulates his 
friend upon returning to the Court; but he adds a solemn 
warning against its idleness and dissipations. Familiarity 
with English affairs confirmed his bad opinion of Eliza- 
beth's Court circle. He saw that she was arbitrary in her 
distribution of wealth and honours ; he feared lest Philip's 
merits should be ignored, while some more worthless fa- 
vourite was being pampered. Once he had hoped that 
his service of the queen would speedily advance him to 
employment in public affairs. Now he recognised the pos- 
sibility of that young hopeful life being wasted upon for- 
malities and pastimes; and for England he prophesied a 
coming time of factions, complicated by serious foreign 
troubles. It is the letter of a saddened man, slowly de- 
clining towards the grave, amid forebodings which the im- 
mediate future of Europe only too well justified. Languet 
had now just eleven months more to live. He died in 
September 1581 at Antwerp, nursed through his last ill- 
ness by the wife of his noble friend Philip du Plessis Mor- 
nay, and followed to the tomb by William, Prince of 
Orange. Among the poems given to Phillisides in the Ar- 
cadia is one which may perhaps have been written about 
the time when Languet's death had brought to Philip's 



v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 95 

memory the debt of gratitude he owed this faithful coun- 
sellor : — 

" The song I sang old Languet had me taught, 
Languet the shepherd best swift Ister knew 
For clerkly reed, and hating what is naught, 

For faithful heart, clean hands, and mouth as true ; 
With his sweet skill my skilless youth he drew 
To have a feeling taste of Him that sits 
Beyond the heaven, far more beyond our wits. 

" He said the music best thilk powers pleased 
Was sweet accord between our wit and will,, 
Where highest notes to godliness are raised, 
And lowest sink not down to jot of ill ; 
With old true tales he wont mine ears to fill, 
How shepherds did of yore, how now they thrive, 
Spoiling their flocks, or while 'twixt them they strive. 

" He liked me, but pitied lustful youth ; 

His good strong staff my slippery years upbore ; 
He still hoped well because I loved truth ; 

Till forced to part, with heart and eyes even sore, 
To worthy Corydon he gave me o'er." 

On New Year's Day, 1581, Philip presented the queen 
with a heart of gold, a chain of gold, and a whip with a 
golden handle. These gifts symbolised his devotion to her, 
and her right to chastise him. The year is marked in his 
biography by his first entrance into Parliament, as knight 
of the shire for Kent. He only sat two months ; but dur- 
ing that short period he joined the committees appointed 
to frame rules for enforcing laws against Catholics, and for 
suppressing seditious practices by word or deed against her 
Majesty. The French match was still uppermost in Eliza- 
beth's mind. She hankered after it; and some of the 
wisest heads in Europe, among them William the Silent, 



96 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

approved of the project. Yet she was unable to decide. 
The Puke of Anjon had raised questions as to the event- 
uality of England becoming dependent on the French 
Crown ; which it might have been, if he had married the 
Queen, and succeeded to his childless brother. This made 
her pause and reflect. She was, moreover, debating the 
scheme of an alliance with Henri III. against Spain. Be- 
tween the two plans her mind wavered. As Walsingham 
wrote to Burleigh : " When her Majesty is pressed to the 
marriage, then she seemeth to effect a league ; and when 
the league is yielded to, then she liketh better a marriage; 
and when thereupon she is moved to assent to marriage, 
then she hath recourse to the league ; and when the mo- 
tion is for the league, or any request is made for money, 
then her Majesty returneth to the marriage." 

These hesitations seem to have been augmented by the 
urgency of the French Court. On the 16th of April Fran- 
cis of Bourbon arrived from Paris at the head of a mag- 
nificent embassy, with the avowed object of settling pre- 
liminaries. They were received with due honour by the 
principal nobles of Elizabeth's Court, all open opposition 
to the marriage having now been withdrawn by common 
consent. Among the entertainments provided for the en- 
voys during their sojourn in London, Philip played a con- 
spicuous part. Together with the Earl of Arundel, Lord 
Windsor, and Fulke Greville, he prepared a brilliant display 
of chivalry. Calling themselves the Four Foster Children 
of Desire, they pledged their word to attack and win, if 
possible, by force of arms, the Fortress of Perfect Beauty. 
This fort, which was understood to be the allegorical abode 
of the queen, was erected in the Tilt Yard at Whitehall. 
Seven times the number of the challengers, young gentle- 
men of knightly prowess, offered themselves as defenders 



v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 97 

of the fortress ; and it was quite clear from the first how 
the tournament would end. This foregone conclusion did 
not, however, mar the sport; and the compliment intended 
to Elizabeth would have been spoiled, if the Foster Chil- 
dren of Desire could have forced their way into her Castle 
of Beauty. The assault upon the Fortress of Perfect Beau- 
ty began on the 15th of May and was continued on the 
16th, when the challengers acknowledged their defeat. 
They submitted their capitulation to the queen, by the 
mouth of a lad, attired in ash-coloured clothes, and bear- 
ing an olive-branch. From the detailed accounts which 
survive of the event, I will only transcribe what serves to 
bring Philip Sidney and his train before us. The passage 
describes his entrance on the first day of the lists : — 

"Then proceeded Master Philip Sidney in very sumptuous manner, 
with armour, part blue and the rest gilt and engraven, with four 
spare horses, having caparisons and furniture very rich and costly, 
as some of cloth of gold embroidered with pearl, and some embroid- 
ered with gold and silver feathers, very richly and cunningly wrought. 
He had four pages that rode on his four spare horses, who had cas- 
sock coats and Venetian hose, all of cloth of silver, laied with gold 
lace, and hats of the same with gold bands and white feathers, and 
each one a pair of white buskins. Then had he thirty gentlemen 
and yeomen, and four trumpeters, who were all in cassock coats and 
Venetian hose of yellow velvet laied with silver lace, yellow velvet 
caps with silver bands and white feathers, and every one a pair of 
white buskins ; and they had upon their coats a scroll or band of 
silver, which came scarf-wise over the shoulder, and so down under 
the arm, with this posy or sentence written upon it, both before and 
behind : Sic nos non nobis." 

It behoves us not to ask, but we cannot help wondering, 
where the money came from for this costly show. Proba- 
bly Philip was getting into debt. His appeals to friends 
with patronage at their disposal became urgent during the 
5* 



98 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

ensuing months. Though he obtained no post which com- 
bined public duties with pay, a sinecure worth £120 a year 
was given him. It must be said to his credit that he did 
not so much desire unearned money as some lucrative ap- 
pointment, entailing labour and responsibility. This the 
queen would not grant ; even an application made by him 
so late as the summer of 1583, begging for employment 
at the Ordnance under his uncle Warwick, was refused. 
Meanwhile his European reputation brought invitations, 
which prudence bade him reject. One of these arrived 
from Don Antonio of Portugal, a bastard pretender to that 
kingdom, calliug upon Philip Sidney to join his forces. 
The life at Court, onerous by reason of its expenditure, 
tedious through indolence and hope deferred, sweetened 
chiefly by the companionship of Greville and Dyer, wore 
tiresomely on. And over all these months wavered the 
fascinating vision of Stella, now a wife, to whom Phillisides 
was paying ardent homage. It may well be called a dan- 
gerous passage in his short life, the import of which we 
shall have to fathom when we take up Astrophel and Stella 
for perusal. Courtly monotony had its distractions. The 
French match, for instance, afforded matter for curiosity 
and mild excitement. This reached its climax when the 
Duke of Anjou arrived in person. He came in November, 
and stayed three months. When he left England in Feb- 
ruary 1582, the world knew that this project of a marriage 
for Elizabeth was at an end. Sidney, with the flower of 
English aristocracy, attended the French prince to Antwerp. 
There he was proclaimed Duke of Brabant, and welcomed 
with shows of fantastic magnificence. We may dismiss 
all further notice of him from the present work, with the 
mention of his death in 1584. It happened on the first 
of June, preceding the Prince of Orange's assassination by 



v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 99 

just one month. People thought that Anjou also had been 
murdered. 

The greater part of the year 1582 is a blank in Philip's 
biography. We only know that he was frequently absent 
from the Court, and in attendance on his father. Sir Hen- 
ry Sidney's affairs were seriously involved. The Crown 
refused him substantial aid, and kept him to his post at 
Ludlow Castle. Yet, at the beginning of 1583, we find 
Philip again in waiting on the queen ; presenting her with 
a golden flower-pot, and receiving the gracious gift of a 
lock of the royal virgin's hair. In January Prince Casimir 
had to be installed Knight of the Garter. Philip was 
chosen as his proxy, and obtained the honour of knighthood 
for himself. Henceforward he takes rank as Sir Philip 
Sidney of Penshurst. 

Never thoroughly at ease in courtly idleness, Philip 
formed the habit of turning his eyes westward, across the 
ocean, towards those new continents where wealth and 
boundless opportunities of action lay ready for adventurous 
knights. Frobisher's supposed discovery of gold in 1577 
drew an enthusiastic letter from him. In 1578 he was 
meditating some "Indian project." In 1580 he wrote 
wistfully to his brother Robert about Drake's return, " of 
which yet I know not the secret points; but about the 
world he hath been, and rich he is returned." In 1582 
his college friend, Richard Hakluyt, inscribed the first col- 
lection of his Voyages with Sidney's name. All things 
pointed in the direction of his quitting England for the 
New World, if a suitable occasion should present itself, 
and if the queen should grant him her consent. During 
the spring of 1583 projects for colonisation, or plantation 
as it then was termed, were afloat among the west country 
gentlefolk. Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half-brother 



100 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Walter Raleigh, with Sir George Peckliam and others, 
thought of renewing the attempts they had already made 
in 1578. Elizabeth in that year had signed her first char- 
ter of lands to be explored beyond the seas, in favour of 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert ; and now she gave a second to Sir 
Philip Sidney. It licensed and authorised him 

" To discover, search, find out, view, and inhabit certain parts of 
America not yet discovered, and out of those countries by him, his 
heirs, factors, or assignees, to have and enjoy, to him, his heirs, and 
assignees for ever, such and so much quantity of ground as shall 
amount to the number of thirty hundred thousand acres of ground 
and wood, with all commodities, jurisdictions, and royalties, both by 
sea and land, with full power and authority that it should and might 
be lawful for the said Sir Philip Sidney, his heirs and assignees, at 
all times thereafter to have, take, and lead in the same voyage, to 
travel thitherwards or to inhabit there with him or them, and every 
or any of them, such and so many her Majesty's subjects as should 
willingly accompany him and them and every or any of them, with 
sufficient shipping and furniture for their transportation." 

In other words, her Majesty granted to Sir Philip Sidney 
the pretty little estate of three millions of acres in North 
America. It is true that the land existed, so to say, in nu- 
bibus, and was by no "means sure to prove an El Dorado. 
It was far more sure that if the grantee got possession of 
it, he would have to hold it by his own strength ; for Brit- 
ain, at this epoch, was not pledged to support her colonies. 
Yet considering the present value of the soil in Virginia 
or New England, the mere fantastic row of seven figures 
in American acres, so lightly signed away by her Majesty, 
is enough to intoxicate the imagination. How Philip 
managed to extort or wheedle this charter from Elizabeth 
we have no means of knowing. She was exceedingly jeal- 
ous of her courtiers, and would not willingly lose sight of 



v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 101 

them. When Philip two years later engaged himself in a 
colonising expedition, we shall see that she positively for- 
bade him to leave England. Now, however, it is probable 
she knew that he conld uot take action on her gift. She 
was merely bestowing an interest in speculations which 
cost her nothing and might bring him profit. At any rate, 
the matter took this turn. In July 1583 he executed a 
deed relinquishing 30,000 acres, together with "all royal- 
ties, titles, pre-eminences, privileges, liberties, and dignities," 
which the queen's grant carried, to his friend Sir George 
Peckham. 

The reason of this act of resignation was that Philip 
had pledged his hand in marriage to Prances, daughter of 
Sir Francis Walsingham. So far back as December 1581 
there are indications that his friendship with Walsingham 
and his family was ripening into something more intimate. 
We do not know the date of his marriage for certain ; but 
it is probable that he was already a husband before the 
month of July. 

A long letter addressed in March 1583 by Sir Henry 
Sidney to Walsingham must here be used, since it throws 
the strongest light upon the circumstances of the Sid- 
ney family, and illustrates Sir Henry's feeling with regard 
to his son's marriage. The somewhat discontented tone 
which marks its opening is, I think, rather apologetical 
than regretful. Sir Henry felt that, on both sides, the 
marriage was hardly a prudent one. He had expected 
some substantial assistance from the Crown through Wal- 
singham's mediation. This had not been granted ; and he 
took the opportunity of again laying a succinct report of 
his past services and present necessities before the secreta- 
ry of state, in the hope that something might yet be done 
to help him. The document opens as follows : — 



102 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

"Dear Sir — I have understood of late that coldness is thought in 
me in proceeding in the matter of marriage of our children. In 
truth, sir, it is not so, nor so shall it ever be found; for compremit- 
ting the consideration of the articles to the Earls named by you, and 
to the Earl of Huntingdon, I most willingly agree, and protest, and 
joy in the alliance with all my heart. But since, by your letters of 
the 3d of January, to my great discomfort I find there is no hope of 
relief of her Majesty for my decayed estate in her Highness' service, 
I am the more careful to keep myself able, by sale of part of that 
which is left, to ransom me out of the servitude I live in for my 
debts ; for as I know, sir, that it is the virtue which is, or that you 
suppose is, in my son, that you made choice of hiin for your daugh- 
ter, refusing haply far greater and far richer matches than he, so 
was my confidence great that by your good means I might have ob- 
tained some small reasonable suit of her Majesty ; and therefore I 
nothing regarded any present gain, for if I had, I might have re- 
ceived a great sum of money for my good will of my son's marriage, 
greatly to the relief of my private biting necessity." 

After this exordium, Sir Henry takes leave to review his 
actions as Viceroy of Ireland and Governor of Wales, with 
the view of showing- how steadfastly he had served his 
queen and how ill he had been recompensed. 

" Three times her Majesty hath sent me her Deputy into Ireland, 
and in every of the three times I sustained a great and a violent re- 
bellion, every one of which I subdued, and (with honourable peace) 
left the country in quiet. I returned from each of these three Depu- 
tations three hundred pounds worse than I went." 

It would be impertinent to the subject of this essay were 
I to follow Sir Henry in the minute and interesting account 
of his Irish administration. Suffice it to say that the let- 
ter to Walsingham is both the briefest and the most mate- 
rial statement of facts which we possess regarding that pe- 
riod of English rule. Omitting then all notice of public 
affairs, I pass on to confidences of a more personal charac- 



v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 103 

ter. After dwelling upon sundry embassies and other em- 
ployments, he proceeds : — 

11 Truly, sir, by all these I neither won nor saved ; but now, by 
your patience, once again to my great and high office — for great it is 
in that in some sort I govern the third part of this realm under her 
most excellent Majesty ; high it is, for by that I have precedency of 
great personages and far my betters : happy it is for the people whom 
I govern, as before is written, and most happy for the commodity that 
I have by the authority of that place to do good every day, if I have 
grace, to one or other-, wherein I confess I feel no small felicity; 
but for any profit I gather by it, God and the people (seeing my 
manner of life") knowetb it is not possible how I should gather 
any. 

"For, alas, sir! how can I, not having one groat of pension be- 
longing to the office ? I have not so much ground as will feed a 
mutton. I sell no justice, I trust you do not hear of any order taken 
by me ever reversed, nor my name or doings in any court ever 
brought in question. And if my mind were so base and contempti- 
ble as I would take money of the people whom I command for my 
labour taken among them, yet could they give me none, or very little, 
for the causes that come before me are causes of people mean, 
base, and many very beggars. Only £20 a week to keep an honour- 
able house, and 100 marks a year to bear foreign charges I have ; 
. . . but true books of account shall be, when } T ou will, showed unto 
you that I spend above £30 a week. Here some may object that I 
upon the same keep my wife and her followers. True it is she is 
now with me, and hath been this half year, and before not in many 
years ; and if both she and I had our food and house-room free, as 
we have not, in my conscience we have deserved it. For my part, I 
am not idle, but every day I work in my function ; and she, for her 
old service, and marks yet remaining in her face taken in the same, 
meriteth her meat. When I went to Newhaven I left her a full fair 
lady, in mine eye at least the fairest ; and when I returned I found 
her as foul a lady as the small-pox could make her, which she did 
take by continual attendance of her Majesty's most precious person 
(sick of the same disease), the scars of which, to her resolute dis- 
comfort, ever since have done and doth remain in her face, so as she 
liveth solitarily, sicut mcticorax in domicilio sito, more to my charge 



101 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

than if we had boarded together, as we did before that evil accident 
happened." 

The epistle ends with a general review of Sir Henry's 
pecuniary situation, by which it appears that the Sidney 
estate had been very considerably impoverished during his 
tenure of it. 

" The rest of my life is with an over-long precedent discourse 
manifested to you. But this to your little comfort I cannot omit, 
that whereas my father had but one son, and he of no great proof, 
being of twenty-four years of age at his death, and I having three 
sons; one of excellent good proof, the second of great good proof, 
and the third not to be despaired of, but very well to be liked ; if I 
die to-morrow next I should leave them worse than my father left 
me by £20,000 ; and I am now fifty-four years of age, toothless and 
trembling, being £5000 in debt, yea, and £30,000 worse than I was 
at the death of my most dear king and master, King Edward VI. 

"I have not of the crown of England of my own getting, so much 
ground as I can cover with my foot. All my fees amount not to 100 
marks a year. I never had since the queen's reign any extraordi- 
nary aid by license, forfeit, or otherwise. And yet for all that was 
done, and somewhat more than here is written, I cannot obtain to 
have in fee-farm £100 a year, already in my own possession, paying 
the rent. 

" And now, dear sir and brother, an end of this tragical discourse, 
tedious for you to read, but more tedious it would have been if it 
had come written with my own hand, as first it was. Tragical I 
may well term it ; for that it began with the joyful love and great 
liking with likelihood of matrimonial match between our most dear 
and sweet children (whom God bless), and endeth with declaration 
of my unfortunate and hard estate. 

" Our Lord bless you with long life and happiness. I pray you, 
sir, commend me most heartily to my good lady, cousin, and sister, 
your wife, and bless and kiss our sweet daughter. And if 3-ou will 
vouchsafe, bestow a blessing upon the } r oung knight, Sir Philip." 

There is not much to say of Philip's bride. He and she 
lived together as man and wife barely three years. Nothing 



T.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIX, AND MARRIAGE. 105 

remains to prove that she was either of assistance to him 
or the contrary. After his death she contracted a secret 
marriage with Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex ; and 
when she lost this second husband on the scaffold, she 
adopted the Catholic religion and became the wife of 
Lord Clanricarde. In this series of events I can see noth- 
ing to her discredit, considering the manners of that cen- 
tury. Her daughter by Philip, it is known, made a brill- 
iant marriage with the Earl of Rutland. Her own repeated 
nuptials may be taken to prove her personal attractiveness. 
Sir Philip Sidney, who must have been intimately acquainted 
with her character, chose her for his wife while his passion 
for Penelope Devereux had scarcely cooled ; and he did so 
without the inducements which wealth or brilliant fortunes 
might have offered. 



CHAPTER VI. 



Among Sidney's miscellaneous poems there is a lyric, which 
has been supposed, not without reason, I think, to express 
his feelings upon the event of Lady Penelope Devereux's 
marriage to Lord Rich. 

" Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread ; 
For Love is dead : 

All love is dead, infected 
With plague of deep disdain : 

Worth, as naught worth, rejected, 
And faith fair scorn doth gain. 

From so ungrateful fancy, 

From such a female frenzy, 

From them that use men thus, 

Good Lord, deliver us ! 

" Weep, neighbours, weep ; do you not hear it said 
That Love is dead ? 

His death-bed, peacock's folly ; 
His winding-sheet is shame ; 

His will, false-seeming holy ; 
His sole executor, blame. 

From so ungrateful fancy, 

From such a female frenzy, 

From them that use men thus, 

Good Lord, deliver us ! 



chap, vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 107 

"Alas ! I lie: rage hath this error bred ; 
Love is not dead ; 

Love is not dead, but sleepeth 
In her unmatched mind, 

Where she his counsel keepeth 
Till due deserts she find. 

Therefore from so vile fancy, 

To call such wit a frenzy, 

Who Love can temper thus, 

Good Lord, deliver us !" 

These stanzas sufficiently set forth the leading passion 
of Astrophel and Stella. That series of poems celebrates 
Sir Philip Sidney's love for Lady Rich after her marriage, 
his discovery that this love was returned, and the curb 
which her virtue set upon his too impetuous desire. Be- 
fore the publication of Shakespeare's sonnets, these were 
undoubtedly the finest love poems in our language ; and 
though exception may be taken to the fact that they were 
written for a married woman, their purity of tone and 
philosophical elevation of thought separate them from the 
vulgar herd of amatorious verses. 

I have committed myself to the opinion that Astrophel 
and Stella was composed, if not wholly, yet in by far the 
greater part, after Lady Rich's marriage. This opinion be- 
ing contrary to the judgment of excellent critics, and op- 
posed to the wishes of Sidney's admirers, I feel bound to 
state my reasons. In the first place, then, the poems would 
have no meaning if they were written for a maiden. When 
a friend, quite early in the series, objects to Sidney that 

" Desire 
Doth plunge my well-formed soul even in the mire 
Of sinful thoughts which do in ruin end," 

what significance could these words have if Stella were still 



108 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

free ? Stella, throughout two-thirds of the series (after No. 
xxxiii.), makes no concealment of her love for Astrophel ; 
and yet she persistently repels his ardent wooing. Why 
should she have done so, if she was at liberty to obey her 
father's death-bed wish and marry him ? It may here be 
objected that the reasons for the breaking off of her in- 
formal engagement to Sidney are not known; both he and 
she were possibly conscious that the marriage could not 
take place. To this I answer that a wife's refusal of a 
lover's advances differs from a maiden's ; and Stella's re- 
fusal in the poems is clearly, to my mind at least, that of a 
married woman. Sidney, moreover, does not hint at un- 
kind fate or true love hindered in its course by insurmount- 
able obstacles. He has, on the other hand, plenty to say 
about the unworthy husband, Stella's ignoble bondage, and 
Lord Rich's jealousy. 

But, it has been urged, we are not sure that we possess 
the sonnets and songs of Astrophel and Stella in their 
right order. May we not conjecture that they were either 
purposely or unintelligently shuffled by the publisher, who 
surreptitiously obtained copies of the loose sheets? And 
again, will not close inspection of the text reveal local and 
temporal allusions, by means of which we shall be able to 
assign some of the more compromising poems to dates be- 
fore Penelope's marriage? 

There are two points here for consideration, which I 
will endeavour to treat separately. The first edition of 
Astrophel and Stella was printed in 1591 by Thomas New- 
man. Where this man obtained his manuscript does not 
appear. But in the dedication he says : " It was my fortune 
not many days since to light upon the famous device of 
Astrophel and Stella, which carrying the general com- 
mendation of all men of judgment, and being reported to 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 109 

be one of the rarest things that ever any Englishman set 
abroach, I have thought good to publish it." Further on 
he adds: "For my part I have been very careful in the 
printing of it, and whereas, being spread abroad in written 
copies, it had gathered much corruption by ill-writers ; I 
have used their help and advice in correcting and restoring 
it to his first dignity that I know were of skill and expe- 
rience in those matters." If these sentences have any 
meaning, it is that Astrophel and Stella circulated widely 
in manuscript, as a collected whole, and not in scattered 
sheets, before it fell into the hands of Newman. It was 
already known to the world as a "famous device," a "rare 
thing ;" and throughout the dedication it is spoken of as a 
single piece. What strengthens this argument is that the 
Countess of Pembroke, in her lifetime, permitted Astrophel 
and Stella to be reprinted, together with her own corrected 
version of the Arcadia, without making any alteration in 
its arrangement. 

If we examine the poems with minute attention we shall, 
I think, be led to the conclusion that they have not been 
shuffled, but that we possess them in the order in which 
Sidney wrote them. To begin with, the first nine sonnets 
form a kind of exordium. They set forth the object for 
which the whole series was composed, they celebrate Stella's 
mental and personal charms in general, they characterise 
Sidney's style and source of inspiration, and criticise the 
affectations of his contemporaries. In the second place, 
we find that many of the sonnets are written in sequence. 
I will cite, for example, Nos. 31-34, Nos. 38-40, Nos. 69- 
72, Nos. 87-92, Nos. 93-100. Had the order been either 
unintelligently or intentionally confused, it is not probable 
that these sequences would have survived entire. And upon 
this point I may notice that the interspersed lyrics occur in 



110 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

their proper places, that is to say, in close connection with 
the subject-matter of accompanying sonnets. It may third- 
ly be observed that Astrophel and Stella, as we have it, ex- 
hibits a natural rhythm and development of sentiment, from 
admiration and chagrin, through expectant passion, followed 
by hope sustained at a high pitch of enthusiasm, down to 
eventual discouragement and resignation. As Thomas Nash 
said in his preface to the first edition : " The chief actor 
here is Melpomene, whose dusky robes dipped in the ink of 
tears as yet seem to drop when I see them near. The ar- 
gument cruel chastity, the prologue hope, the epilogue de- 
spair." That the series ends abruptly, as though its author 
had abandoned it from weariness, should also be noticed. 
This is natural in the case of lyrics, which were clearly the 
outpouring of the poet's inmost feelings. When he had 
once determined to cast off the yoke of a passion which 
could not but have been injurious to his better self, Astro- 
phel stopped singing. He was not rounding off a subject 
artistically contemplated from outside. There was no en- 
voy to be written when once the aliment of love had been 
abandoned. 

With regard to the second question I have raised, name- 
ly, whether close inspection will not enable us to fix dates 
for the composition of Astrophel and Stella, and thus to 
rearrange the order of its pieces, I must say that very few 
of the poems seem to me to offer any solid ground for crit- 
icism of this kind. Sonnets 24, 35, and 37 clearly allude 
to Stella's married name. Sonnet 41, the famous " Having 
this day my horse, my hand, my lance," may refer to Sid- 
ney's assault upon the Castle of Perfect Beauty ; but since 
he was worsted in that mimic siege, this seems doubtful. 
The mention of " that sweet enemy France " might lead us 
equally well to assign it to the period of Aujou's visit In 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." Ill 

cither case, the date would be after Stella's betrothal to 
Lord Rich. Sonnet 30, " Whether the Turkish new moon 
minded be," points to political events in Europe which were 
taking- place after the beginning of 1581, and consequent- 
ly about the period of Penelope's marriage. These five 
sonnets fall within the first forty-one of a series which 
numbers one hundred and eight. After them I can dis- 
cover nothing but allusions to facts of private life, Astro- 
phel's absence from the Court, Stella's temporary illness, a 
stolen kiss, a lover's quarrel. 

In conclusion, I would fain point out that any one who 
may have composed a series of poems upon a single theme, 
extending over a period of many months, will be aware how 
impertinent it is for an outsider to debate their order. 
Nothing can be more certain, in such species of composi- 
tion, than that thoughts once suggested will be taken up for 
more elaborate handling on a future occasion. Thus the 
contention between love and virtue, which occurs early in 
Astrophel and Stella, is developed at length towards its 
close. The Platonic conception of beauty is suggested near 
the commencement, and is worked out in a later sequence. 
Sometimes a motive from external life supplies the poet 
with a single lyric, which seems to interrupt the lover's 
monologue. Sometimes he strikes upon a vein so fruitful 
that it yields a succession of linked sonnets and intercalated 
songs. 

I have attempted to explain why I regard Astrophel and 
Stella as a single whole, the arrangement of which does not 
materially differ from that intended by its author. I have 
also expressed my belief that it was written after Penelope 
Devereux became Lady Rich. This justifies me in saying, 
as I did upon a former page, that the exact date of her 
marriage seems to me no matter of vital importance in Sir 



112 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Philip Sidney's biography. My theory of the love which 
it portrays, is that this was latent up to the time of her be- 
trothal, and that the consciousness of the irrevocable at that 
moment made it break into the kind of regretful passion 
which is peculiarly suited for poetic treatment. Stella may 
have wasted some of Philip's time; but it is clear that she 
behaved honestly, and to her lover helpfully, by the firm 
but gentle refusal of his overtures. Throughout these po- 
ems, though I recognise their very genuine emotion, I can- 
not help discerning the note of what may be described as 
poetical exaggeration. In other words, I do not believe 
that Sidney would in act have really gone so far as he pro- 
fesses to desire. On paper it was easy to demand more 
than seriously, in hot or cold blood, he would have attempt- 
ed. To this artistic exaltation of a real feeling the chosen 
form of composition both traditionally and artistically lent 
itself. Finally, when all these points have been duly con- 
sidered, we must not forget that society at that epoch was 
lenient, if not lax, in matters of the passions. Stella's posi- 
tion at Court, while she was the acknowledged mistress of 
Sir Charles Blount, suffices to prove this ; nor have we any 
reason to suppose that Philip was, in this respect, more " a 
spirit without blot " than his contemporaries. Some of his 
death-bed meditations indicate sincere repentance for past 
follies; but that his liaison with Lady Rich involved noth- 
ing worse than a young man's infatuation, appears from the 
pervading tone of Astrophel and Stella. A motto might 
be chosen for it from the 66th sonnet : 

" I cannot brag of word, much less of deed." 

The critical cobwebs which beset the personal romance 
of Astrophel and Stella have now been cleared away. Read- 
ers of these pages know how I for one interpret its prob- 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 113 

lems. Whatever opinion they may form upon a topic 
which has exercised many ingenious minds, we are able at 
length to approach the work of art, and to study its beau- 
ties together. Regarding one point, I would fain submit a 
word of preliminary warning. However artificial and allu- 
sive may appear the style of these love poems, let us pre- 
pare ourselves to find real feeling and substantial thought 
expressed in them. It was not a mere rhetorical embroid- 
ery of phrases which moved downright Ben Jonson to ask : 

" Hath not great Sidney Stella set 
Where never star shone brighter yet?" 

It was no flimsy string of pearled conceits which drew from 
Richard Crashaw in his most exalted moment that allusion 

to: 

" Sydnaean showers 
Of sweet discourse, whose powers 
Can crown old Winter's head with flowers." 

The elder poets, into whose ken Astrophel and Stella swam 
like a thing of unimagined and unapprehended beauty, had 
no doubt of its sincerity. The quaintness of its tropes, 
and the condensation of its symbolism were proofs to them 
of passion stirring the deep soul of a finely-gifted, highly- 
educated man. They read it as we read In Memoriam, ac- 
knowledging some obscure passages, recognising some awk- 
wardness of incoherent utterance, but taking these on trust 
as evidences of the poet's heart too charged with stuff for 
ordinary methods of expression. What did Shakespeare 
make Achilles say ? 

" My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirred, 
And I myself see not the bottom of it." 

Charles Lamb puts this point well. " The images which 
6 



114 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

lie before our feet (though by some accounted the only- 
natural) are least natural for the high Sydnaean love to ex- 
press its fancies. They may serve for the love of Tibnllus, 
or the dear author of the Schoolmistress ; for passions that 
weep and whine in elegies and pastoral ballads. I am sure 
Milton (and Lamb might have added Shakespeare) never 
loved at this rate." 

The forms adopted by Sidney in his AstropJiel and Stella 
sonnets are various ; but none of them correspond exactly 
to the Shakespearian type — four separate quatrains clinched 
with a final couplet. He adheres more closely to Italian 
models, especially in his handling of the octave ; although 
we find only two specimens (Nos. 29, 94) of the true Pe- 
trarchan species in the treatment of the sextet. Sidney 
preferred to close the stanza with a couplet. The best and 
most characteristic of his compositions are built in this 
way : two quatrains upon a pair of rhymes, arranged as a, 
b, b, a, a, b, b,a; followed by a quatrain c. d, c, d, and a coup- 
let e,e. The pauses frequently occur at the end of the 
eighth line, and again at the end of the eleventh, so that 
the closing couplet is not abruptly detached from the struct- 
ure of the sextet. It will be observed from the quotations 
which follow that this, which I indicate as the most dis- 
tinctively Sidneyan type, is by no means invariable. To 
analyse each of the many schemes under which his sonnets 
can be arranged, would be unprofitable in a book which 
does not pretend to deal technically with this form of stan- 
za. Yet I may add that he often employs a type of the 
sextet, which is commoner in French than in Italian or 
English poetry, with this rhyming order : c, c, d, <?, e, d. I 
have counted twenty of this sort. 

The first sonnet, which is composed in lines of twelve 
syllables, sets forth the argument : 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 115 

" Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, 

That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain, 
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, 

Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain ; 
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, 

Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain, 
Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow 

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain. 
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay; 

Invention, nature's child, fled step-dame study's blows; 
Another's feet still seemed but stranger's in my way. 

Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, 
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite — 

' Pool,' said my Muse to me, ' look in thy heart and write !' " 

This means that Sidney's love was sincere ; but that he 
first sought expression for it in phrases studied from fa- 
mous models. He wished to please his lady, and to move 
her pity. His efforts proved ineffectual, until the Muse 
came and said: "Look in thy heart and write." Like 
Dante, Sidney then declared himself to be one : 

" Che quando, 
Amore spira, noto ; ed a quel modo 
Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando." 

Purg. 24. 52. 

" Love only reading unto me this art." 

Astrophel and Stella, sonnet 28. 

The 3d, 6th, 15th, and 28th sonnets return to the same 
point. He takes poets to task, who 

' With strange similes enrich each line, 
Of herbs or beasts which Ind or Af ric hold." 

(No. 3.) 

He describes how 

" Some one his song in Jove, and Jove's strange tales attires, 
Bordered with bulls and swans, powdered with golden rain ; 



116 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 



Another, humbler wit, to shepherd's pipe retires, 
Yet hiding royal blood full oft in. rural vein." 

He inveighs ao-ainst 



(No. 6.) 



" You that do search for every purling spring 
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows ; 
And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows 
Near thereabouts, into your poesy wring ; 
Ye that do dictionary's method bring 

Into your rhymes, running in rattling rows ; 
You that poor Petrarch's long deceased woes, 
With new-born sighs, and denizened wits do sing." 

(No. 15.) 

He girds no less against 

" You that with allegory's curious frame 

Of other's children changelings use to make." 

(No. 28.) 

All these are on the wrong tack. Stella is sufficient source 
of inspiration for him, for them, for every singer. This 
theoretical position does not, however, prevent him from 
falling into a very morass of conceits, of which we have an 
early example in the 9th sonnet. Marino could scarcely 
have executed variations more elaborate upon the single 
theme : 

" Queen Virtue's Court, which some call Stella's face." 

I may here state that I mean to omit those passages in As- 
tr&phel and Stella which strike me as merely artificial. I 
want, if possible, to introduce readers to what is perennially 
and humanly valuable in the poetical record of Sir Philip 
Sidney's romance. More than enough will remain of emo- 
tion simply expressed, of deep thought pithily presented, to 
fill a longer chapter than I can dedicate to his book of the 
heart. 



yi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 117 

The 2d sonnet describes the growth of Sidney's passion. 
Love, he says, neither smote him at first sight, nor aimed an 
upward shaft to pierce his heart on the descent. 1 Long 
familiarity made him appreciate Stella. Liking deepened 
into love. Yet at the first he neglected to make his love 
known. Now, too late, he finds himself hopelessly enslaved 
when the love for a married woman can yield only torment. 

" Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot, 

Love gave the wound, which, while I breathe will bleed ; 

But known worth did in mine of time proceed, 
Till by degrees it had full conquest got. 
I saw and liked ; I liked, but loved not ; 

I loved, but straight did not what Love decreed : 

At length to Love's decrees I forced agreed, 
Yet with repining at so partial lot. 

Now even that footstep of lost liberty 
Is gone ; and now, like slave-born Muscovite, 

I call it praise to suffer tyranny ; 
And now employ the remnant of my wit 

To make myself believe that all is well, 

While with a feeling skill I paint my hell." 

In the 4th and 5th sonnets two themes are suggested, 
which, later on, receive fuller development. The first is the 
contention between love and virtue ; the second is the Pla- 
tonic conception of beauty as a visible image of virtue. 
The latter of these motives is thus tersely set forth in son- 
net 25 : 

" The wisest scholar of the wight most wise 

By Phoebus' doom, with sugared sentence says 

1 This, at least, is how I suppose we ought to interpret the word 
dribbed. In Elizabethan English this seems to have been technically 
equivalent to what in archery is now called elevating as opposed to 
shooting point blank. 



118 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

That virtue, if it once met with our eyes, 

Strange flames of love it in Our souls would raise." 

Here, at the commencement of the series, Sidney rather 
plays with the idea than dwells upon it: 

" True, that true beauty virtue is indeed, 

Whereof this beauty can be but a shade, 
Which elements with mortal mixture breed. 

True, that on earth we are but pilgrims made, 
And should in soul up to our country move ; 
True, and yet true — that I must Stella love." (No. 5.) 

In the 10th sonnet he opens a dispute with Reason, which 
also is continued at intervals throughout the series : 

" I rather wished thee climb the Muses' hill, 
Or reach the fruit of Nature's choicest tree, 
Or seek heaven's course or heaven's inside to see ; 
Why should'st thou toil our thorny soil to till? 

Leave sense, and those which sense's objects be ; 
Deal thou with powers of thoughts, leave Love to Will." 

(No. 10.) 

The next explains how Cupid has taken possession of 
Stella's person ; only the fool has neglected to creep into 
her heart. The 12th expands this theme, and concludes 
thus : 

" Thou countest Stella thine, like those whose powers 

Having got up a breach by fighting well, 
Cry ' Victory ! this fair day all is ours !' 

no ; her heart is such a citadel, 
So fortified with wit, stored with disdain, 
That to win it is all the skill and pain." (No. 12.) 

At this point, then, of Astrophel's love-diary, Stella still 
held her heart inviolate, like an acropolis which falls not 
with the falling of the outworks. In the 14th he replies 



VI.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 119 

to a friend who expostulates because he yields to the sinful 
desire for a married woman : 

" If that be sin which doth the manners frame, 

Well stayed with truth in word and faith of deed, 

Ready of wit and fearing naught but shame ; 
If that be sin which in fixed hearts doth breed 

A loathing of all loose unchastity; 

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be." (No. 14.) 

The 16th has one fine line. At first Sidney had trifled 
with love : 

" But while I thus with this young lion played," 

I fell, he says, a victim to Stella's eyes. The 18th bewails 
his misemployed manhood, somewhat in Shakespeare's 
vein : 

" My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toys ; 
My wit doth strive these passions to defend, 
Which, for reward, spoil it with vain annoys." (Xo. 18.) 

The 21st takes up the same theme, and combines it with 
that of the 14th: 

"Your words, my friend, right healthful caustics, blame 
My young mind marred." 

It is clear that Stella's love was beginning to weigh 
heavily upon his soul. Friends observed an alteration in 
him, and warned him against the indulgence of anything 
so ruinous as this passion for a woman who belonged to 
another. As yet their admonitions could be entertained 
and playfully put by. Sidney did not feel himself irrevo- 
cably engaged. He still trifled with love as a pleasant epi- 
sode in life, a new and radiant experience. At this point 
two well-composed sonnets occur, which show how he be- 



120 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

haved before the world's eyes with the bnrden of bis nas- 
cent love upon bis heart : 

"The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 

Bearing itself in my long-settled eyes, 

Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 
With idle pains and missing aim do guess. 
Some, that know how my spring I did address, 

Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies ; 

Others, because the prince of service tries, 
Think that I think state errors to redress. 
But harder judges judge ambition's rage, 

Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
Holds my young brain captived in golden cage. 

fools, or over-wise ! alas, the race 
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start 
But only Stella's eyes and Stella's heart." (No. 23.) 

" Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 

Seem most alone in greatest company, 

With dearth of words or answers quite awry 
To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 
They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies, 

That poison foul of bubbling pride doth lie 

So in my swelling breast, that only I 
Fawn on myself and others do despise. 
Yet pride, I think, doth not my soul possess, 

Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
But one worse fault, ambition, I confess, 

That makes me oft my best friends overpass, 
Unseen, unheard, while thought to highest place 
Bends all his powers — even unto Stella's grace." (No. 27.) 

Now, too, begin the series of plays upon the name Rich, 
and infectives against Stella's husband. It seems certain 
that Lord Rich was not worthy of his wife. Sidney had 
an unbounded contempt for him. He calls him "rich 
fool " and " lout," and describes Stella's bondage to him as 



Ti.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 121 

"a foul yoke." Yet this disdain, however rightly felt, 
ought not to have found vent in such sonnets as Nos. 24 
and 78. The latter degenerates into absolute offensiveness, 
when, after describing t\\Q faux jaloux under a transparent 
allegory, he winds up with the question : 

" Is it not evil that such a devil wants horns ?" 

The first section of Astrophel and Stella closes with 
sonnet 30. Thus far Sidney has been engaged with his 
poetical exordium. Thus far his love has been an absorb- 
ing pastime rather than the business of his life. The 31st 
sonnet preludes, with splendid melancholy, to a new and 
deeper phase of passion : 

" With how sad steps, moon, thou climb'st the skies ! 

How silently, and with how wan a face ! 

What, may it be that even in heavenly place 
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries ? 
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes 

Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; 

I read it in thy looks ; thy languished grace 
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 
Then, even of fellowship, moon, tell me, 

Is constant love deemed there but want of wit? 
Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 

Do they above love to be loved, and yet 
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess ? 
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness ?" 

Sidney's thoughts, throughout these poems, were often 
with the night; far oftener than Petrarch's or than Shake- 
speare's. In the course of our analysis, we shall cull many 
a meditation belonging to the hours before the dawn, and 
many a pregnant piece of midnight imagery. What can 
be more quaintly accurate in its condensed metaphors than 
the following personification of dreams ? — 
6* 



122 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

" Morpheus, the lively son of deadly sleep, 
Witness of life to them that living die, 
A prophet oft, and oft an history, 
A poet eke, as humours fly or creep." (No. 32.) 

In the 33d sonnet we find the first hint that Stella 
might have reciprocated Astrophel's love : 

" I might, unhappy word, woe me, I might ! 

And then would not, or could not, see my bliss : 
Till now, wrapped in a most infernal night, 

I find how heavenly day, wretch, I did miss. 
Heart, rend thyself ; thou dost thyself but right ! 

No lovely Paris made thy Helen his ; 
No force, no fraud robbed thee of thy delight, 

Nor fortune of thy fortune author is ! 
But to myself myself did give the blow, 

While too much wit, forsooth, so troubled me, 
That I respects for both our sakes must show : 

And yet could not, by rising morn foresee 
How fair a day was near : punished eyes, 
That I had been more foolish or more wise !" (No. 33.) 

This sonnet has generally been taken to refer to Sidney's 
indolence before the period of Stella's marriage ; in which 
case it expands the line of No. 2 : 

" I loved, but straight did not what Love decrees." 

It may, however, have been written upon the occasion of 
some favourable chance which he neglected to seize; and 
the master phrase of the whole composition, " respects for 
both our sakes," rather points to this interpretation. We 
do not know enough of the obstacles to Sidney's match 
with Penelope Devereux to be quite sure whether such " re- 
spects" existed while she was at liberty. 

There is nothing now left for him but to vent his rep-rets 



vi.] " ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 123 

and vain longings in words. But what are empty words, 
what consolation can they bring? 

"And, ah, what hope that hope should once see day, 
Where Cupid is sworn page to chastity ?" (No. 35.) 

Each day Stella makes new inroads upon the fortress of 

his so til. 

" Through my long-battered eyes 
Whole armies of thy beauties entered in : 
And there long since, love, thy lieutenant lies." (No. 36.) 

Stella can weep over tales of unhappy lovers she has never 
known. Perhaps if she could think his case a fable, she 
might learn to pity him : 

" Then think, my dear, that you in me do read 
Of lover's ruin some thrice-sad tragedy. 
I am not I ; pity the tale of me !" (No. 45.) 

He entreats her not to shun his presence or withdraw the 
heaven's light of her eyes : 

" Soul's joy, bend not those morning stars from me, 
Where virtue is made strong by beauty's might !" 

Nay, let her gaze upon him, though that splendour should 
wither up his life : 

"A kind of grace it is to kill with speed." (No. 48.) 

He prays to her, as to a deity raised high above the stress 
and tempest of his vigilant desires : 

"Alas, if from the height of virtue's throne 

Thou canst vouchsafe the influence of a thought 
Upon a wretch that long thy grace hath sought, 
Weigh then how I by thee am overthrown !" (No. 40.) 

It is here, too, that the pathetic outcry, " my mind, now 
of the basest," now (that is) of the lowest and most hum- 



124 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

bled, is forced from him. Then, returning to the theme 
of Stella's unconquerable virtue, he calls her eyes 

" The schools where Venus hath learned chastity." (No. 42.) 

From the midst of this group shine forth, like stars, two 
sonnets of pure but of very different lustre : 

" Come, sleep ! sleep, the certain knot of peace, 

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, 
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 

Th' indifferent judge between the high and low ! 
With shield of proof shield me from out the press 

Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 
make in me those civil wars to cease ; 

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, 

A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light, 
A rosy garland and a weary head ; 

And if these things, as being thine in right, 
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see." (No. 39.) 

" Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance 

Guided so well that I obtained the prize, 

Both by the judgment of the English eyes 
And of some sent from that sweet enemy France ; 
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance, 

Town-folks my strength ; a daintier judge applies 

His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise ; 
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
Others, because of both sides I do take 

My blood from them who did excel in this, 
Think nature me a man-at-arms did make. 

How far they shot awry ! the true cause i3, 
Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race." 

(No. 41.) 






Vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 125 

Sometimes lie feels convinced that this passion will be his 
ruin, and strives, but strives in vain as yet, against it : 

"Virtue, awake ! Beauty but beauty is; 
I may, I must, I can, I will, I do 
Leave following that which it is gain to miss. 

Let her go ! Soft, but here she comes ! Go to, 
Unkind, I love you not ! me, that eye 
Doth make my heart to give my tongue the lie !" 

(No. 47.) 

Sometimes he draws strength from the same passion; at 
another time the sight of Stella well-nigh unnerves his 
trained bridle-hand, and suspends his lance in rest. This 
from the tilting-ground is worth preserving : 

" In martial sports I had my cunning tried, 

And yet to break more staves did me address, 
While with the people's shouts, I must confess, 

Youth, luck, and praise even filled my veins with pride ; 

When Cupid, having me, his slave, descried 
In Mars's livery prancing in the press, 
' What now, Sir Fool !' said he : I would no less : 

' Look here, I say !' I looked, and Stella spied, 

Who hard by made a window send forth light. 

My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes ; 

One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight, 
Nor trumpet's sound I heard nor friendly cries : 

My foe came on, and beat the air for me, 

Till that her blush taught me my shame to see." 

(No. 53.) 

The quaint author of the Life and Death of Sir Philip 
Sidney, prefixed to the Arcadia, relates how : " many no- 
bles of the female sex, venturing as far as modesty would 
permit, to signify their affections unto him ; Sir Philip 
will not read the characters of their love, though obvious 
to every eye." This passage finds illustration in the next 
sonnet : 



126 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

" Because I breathe not love to every one, 
Nor do not use set colours for to wear, 
Nor nourish special locks of vowed hair, 

Nor give each speech a full point of a groan ; 

The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan 
Of them which in their lips love's standard bear, 
4 What he !' say they of me : ' now I dare swear 

He cannot love ; no, no, let him alone !' 

And think so still, so Stella know my mind ! 
Profess indeed I do not Cupid's art : 

But you, fair maids, at length this true shall find, 
That his right badge is but worn in the heart: 

Dumb swans, not chattering pies, do lovers prove; 

They love indeed who quake to say they love." 

(No. 54.) 

Up to this point Stella has been Sidney's saint, the 
adored object, remote as a star from his heart's sphere. 
Now at last she confesses that she loves him. But her 
love is of pure and sisterly temper; and she mingles its 
avowal with noble counsels, little to his inclination. 

" Late tired with woe, even ready for to pine 

With rage of love, I called my love unkind ; 
She in whose eyes love, though unfelt, doth shine, 

Sweet said that I true love in her should find. 
I joyed ; but straight thus watered was my wine : 

That love she did, but loved a love not blind ; 
Which would not let me, whom she loved, decline 

From nobler course, fit for my birth and mind ; 
And therefore by her love's authority 
Willed me these tempests of vain love to fly, 

And anchor fast myself on virtue's shore. 
Alas, if this the only metal be 
Of love new-coined to help my beggary, 

Dear, love me not, that you may love me more !" 

(No. 62.) 

His heated senses rebel against her admonitions : 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 127 

" No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 

give my passions leave to run their race ; 

Let fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 
Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry ; 
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 

Let me no steps but of lost labour trace ; 

Let all the earth with scorn recount my case; 
But do not will me from my love to fly !" (No. 64.) 

Then he seeks relief in trifles. Playing upon his own 
coat of arms (" or, a pheon azure "), he tells Love how he 
nursed him in his bosom, and how they both must surely 
be of the same lineage : 

" For when, naked boy, thou couldst no harbour find 
In this old world, grown now so too-too wise, 
I lodged thee in my heart, and being blind 

By nature born, I gave to thee mine eyes . . . 
Yet let this thought thy tigrish courage pass, 
That I perhaps am somewhat kin to thee ; 
Since in thine arms, if learned fame truth hath spread, 
Thou bear'st the arrow, I the arrow head." 

No. 65.) 

Stella continues to repress his ardour : 

" I cannot brag of word, much less of deed . . . 
Desire still on stilts of fear doth go." (No. 66.) 

Yet once she blushed when their eyes met; and her blush 
"guilty seemed of love." Therefore he expostulates with 
her upon her cruelty : 

" Stella, the only planet of my light, 

Light of my life, and life of my desire, 

Chief good whereto my hope doth only aspire, 
World of my wealth, and heaven of my delight ; 
Why dost thou spend the treasures of thy sprite, 

With voice more fit to wed Amphion's lyre, 

Seeking to quench in me the noble fire 
Fed by thy worth and kindled by thy sight ?" (No. 68.) 



128 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Suddenly, to close tins contention, we find him at the 
height of his felicity. Stella has relented, yielding him 
the kingdom of her heart, but adding the condition that 
he must love, as she does, virtuously : 

" joy too high for my low style to show ! 

bliss fit for a nobler state than me ! 

Envy, put out thine eyes, lest thou do see 
What oceans of delight in me do flow ! 
My friend, that oft saw through all masks my woe, 

Come, come, and let me pour myself on thee : 

Gone is the winter of my misery ; 
My spring appears ; see what here doth grow ! 
For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine, 

Of her high heart given me the monarchy ; 
I, I, I, may say that she is mine ! 

And though she give but thus conditionally, 
This realm of bliss, while virtuous course I take, 
No kings be crowned but they some covenants make." 

(No. 69.) 

Now, the stanzas which have so long eased his sadness, 
shall be turned to joy : 

" Sonnets be not bound prentice to annoy ; 
Trebles sing high, so well as basses deep ; 
Grief but Love's winter-livery is ; the boy 

Hath cheeks to smile, so well as eyes to weep." 

And yet, with the same breath, he says : 

" Wise silence is best music unto bliss." (No. 70.) 

In the next sonnet he shows that Stella's virtuous condi- 
tions do not satisfy. True it is that whoso looks upon 
her face, 

" There shall he find all vices' overthrow, 
Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty 
Of reason. .... 

But, ah, desire still cries : Give me some food !" (No. 71.) 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 129 

Farewell then to desire : 

" Desire, though thou my old companion art, 
And oft so clings to my pure love that I 
One from the other scarcely can descry, 

While each doth blow the fire of my heart ; 

Now from thy fellowship I needs must part." (No. 72.) 

It is characteristic of the fluctuations both of feeling and 
circumstance, so minutely followed in Astrophel's love- 
diary, that, just at this moment, when he has resolved to 
part with desire, he breaks out into this jubilant song upon 
the stolen kiss : 

" Have I caught my heavenly jewel, 
Teaching sleep most fair to be ! 
Nov/ will I teach her that she, 
When she wakes, is too-too cruel. 

" Since sweet sleep her eyes hath charmed, 
The two only darts of Love, 
Now will I with that boy prove 
Some play while he is disarmed. 

" Her tongue, waking, still refuseth, 
Giving frankly niggard no : 
Now will I attempt to know 
What no her tongue, sleeping, useth. 

" See the hand that, waking, guardeth, 
Sleeping, grants a free resort : 
Now will I invade the fort ; 
Cowards Love with loss rewardeth. 

" But, fool, think of the danger 
Of her high and just disdain ! 
Now will I, alas, refrain : 
Love fears nothing else but anger. 



130 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, [chap. 

" Yet those lips, so sweetly swelling, 
Do invite a stealing kiss : 
Now will I but venture this ; 
Who will read, must first learn spelling. 

" Oh, sweet kiss ! but ah, she's waking; 
Lowering beauty chastens nae : 
Now will I for fear hence flee ; 
Fool, more fool, for no mere taking !" 

Several pages are occupied with meditations on this lucky 
kiss. The poet's thoughts turn to alternate ecstasy and 
wantonness. 

" I never drank of Aganippe's well, 
Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, 
And Muses scorn w r ith vulgar brains to dwell ; 
Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit ! 

" How falls it then that with so smooth an ease 

My thoughts I speak ; and what I speak doth flow 
In verse, and that my verse test wits doth please ?" 

The answer of course is : 

"Thy lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss." (No. 14.) 

In this mood we find him praising Edward IV., who risked 
his kingdom for Lady Elizabeth Grey. 

" Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 

Edward, named fourth, as first in praise I name; 
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain, 

Although less gifts imp feathers oft on fame : 
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 

His sire's revenge, joined with a kingdom's gain ; 
And gained by Mars, could yet mad Mars so tame 

That balance weighed what sword did late obtain : 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 131 

Nor that he made the flower-de-luce so 'fraid, 
Though strongly hedged of bloody lions' paws, 

That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid : 

Not this, not that, nor any such small cause ; 

But only for this worthy knight durst prove 

To lose his crown rather than fail his love." (No. 75.) 

A sonnet on the open road, in a vein of conceits worthy of 
Philostratus, closes the group inspired by Stella's kiss : 

" High way, since you my chief Parnassus be, 
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, 
Tempers her words to trampling horse's feet 

More oft than to a chamber-melody: 

Now blessed you bear onward blessed me 

To her, where I my heart, safe-left shall meet, 
My Muse and I must you of duty greet 

With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 

Be you still fair, honoured by public heed ; 

By no encroachment wronged, nor time forgot; 

Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed ; 
And that you know I envy you no lot 

Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss — 

Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss." (No. 84.) 

And now a change comes over the spirit of Sidney's 
dream. It is introduced, as the episode of the stolen kiss 
was, by a song. We do not know on what occasion he 
may have found himself alone with Stella at night, when 
her husband's jealousy was sleeping, the house closed, and 
her mother in bed. But the lyric refers, I think, clearly 
to some real incident — perhaps at Leicester House : 

" Only joy, now here you are 
Fit to hear and ease my care, 
Let my whispering voice obtain 
Sweet reward for sharpest pain ; 
Take me to thee and thee to me : — 
' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 



132 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

" Night hath closed all in her cloak, 
Twinkling stars love-thoughts provoke ; 
Danger hence, good care doth keep ; 
Jealousy himself doth sleep : 
Take me to thee and thee to me : — 
' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 

" Better place no wit can find 
Cupid's knot to loose or bind ; 
These sweet flowers, our fine bed, too 
Us in their best language woo : 
Take me to thee and thee to me : — 
' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 

"This small light the moon bestows, 
Serves thy beams but to disclose ; 
So to raise my hap more high, 
Fear not else ; none can us spy : 
Take me to thee and thee to me : — ■ 
1 No, no, no, no, my dear, let be V 

" That you heard was but a mouse ; 
Dumb sleep holdeth all the house ; 
Yet asleep, methinks they say, 
Young fools, take time while you may : 
Take me to thee and thee to me : — 
' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 

" Niggard time threats, if we miss 
This large offer of our bliss, 
Long stay ere he grant the same : 
Sweet then, while each thing doth frame, 
Take toe to thee and thee to me : — 
4 No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 

" Your fair mother is a-bed, 
Candles out and curtains spread ; 
She thinks you do letters write : 
Write, but first let me endite : 






VI.] " ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 133 

Take me to thee and thee to me : — 
' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 

" Sweet, alas ! why strive you thus ? 
Concord better fitteth us ; 
Leave to Mars the strife of hands ; 
Your power in your beauty stands : 
Take me to thee and thee to me: — 
' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 

" Woe to me ! and do j'ou swear 
Me to hate ? but I forbear : 
Cursed be my destinies all, 

That brought me so high to fall ! 
Soon with my death I'll please thee : — 
" No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !'" 

It will be noticed that to all his pleadings, passionate or 
playful, and (it must be admitted) of very questionable 
morality, she returns a steadfast No ! This accounts for 
the altered tone of the next sonnet. In the 85th he had 
indulged golden, triumphant visions, and had bade his 
heart be moderate in the fruition of its bliss. Now he 
exclaims : 

"Alas ! whence came this change of looks ? If I 
Have changed desert, let mine own conscience be 
A still-felt plague to self-condemning me ; 
Let woe gripe on my heart, shame load mine eye !" 

(No. 86.) 

He has pressed his suit too far, and Stella begins to 
draw back from their common danger. Five songs fol- 
low in quick succession, one of which prepares us for the 
denouement of the love-drama : 

" In a grove most rich of shade, 
Where birds wanton music made, 



134 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

May, then young, his pied weeds showing, 
New-perfumed with flowers fresh growing : 

" Astrophel with Stella sweet 
Did for mutual comfort meet ; 
Both within themselves oppressed, 
But each in the other blessed. 

" Him great harms had taught much care, 
Her fair neck a foul yoke bare ; 
But her sight his careVdid banish, 
In his sight her yoke did vanish. 

" Wept they had, alas, the while ; 
But now tears themselves did smile, 
While their eyes, by Love directed*. 
Interchangeably reflected." 

For a time the lovers sat thus in silence, sighing and 
gazing, until Love himself broke out into a passionate 
apostrophe from the lips of Astrophel : 

" Grant, grant ! but speech, alas, 
Fails me, fearing on to pass : 
Grant, me ! what am I saying ? 
But no fault there is in praying. 

" Grant, dear, on knees I pray 
(Knees on ground he then did stay) 
That not I, but since I love you, 
Time and place for me may move you. 

" Never season was more fit ; 
Never room more apt for it ; 
Smiling air allows my reason ; 
These birds sing, ' Now use the season. 5 

" This small wind, which so sweet is, 
See how it the leaves doth kiss ; 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 135 

Each tree in his best attiring, 
Sense of love to love inspiring. 

" Love makes earth the water drink, 
Love to earth makes water sink ; 
And if dumb things be so witty, 
Shall a heavenly grace want pity ?" 

To this and to yet more urgent wooing Stella replies in 
stanzas which are sweetly dignified, breathing the love she 
felt, but dutifully repressed. 

" Astrophel, said she, my love, 
Cease in these effects to prove ; 
Now be still, yet still believe me, 
Thy grief more than death would grieve me. 

" If that any thought in me 
Can taste comfort but of thee, 
Let me, fed with hellish anguish, 
Joyless, hopeless, endless languish. 

" If those eyes you praised be 
Half so dear as you to me, 
Let me home return stark blinded 
Of those eyes, and blinder minded ; 

"If to secret of my heart 
I do any wish impart 
Where thou art not foremost placed, 
Be both wish and I defaced. 

"If more may be said, I say 
All my bliss in thee I lay ; 
If thou love, my love, content thee, 
For all love, all faith is meant thee. 

" Trust me, while I thee deny, 
In myself the smart I try ; 



136 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Tyrant honour doth thus use thee, 
Stella's self might not refuse thee. 



" Therefore, dear, this no more move, 
Lest, though I not leave thy love, 
Which too deep in me is framed, 
I should blush when thou art named. 

"Therewithal away she went, 
Leaving him to [so ?] passion rent 
With what she had done and spoken, 
That therewith my song is broken." 

The next song records A.strophel's hard necessity of part- 
ing from Stella. But why — 

" Why, alas, doth she thus swear 
That she loveth me so dearly ?" 

The group of sonnets which these lyrics introduce lead 
up to the final rupture, not indeed of heart and will, but 
of imposed necessity, which separates the lovers. Stella 
throughout plays a part which compels our admiration, 
and Astrophel brings himself at length to obedience. The 
situation has become unbearable to her. She loves, and, 
what is more, she has confessed her love. But, at any 
price, for her own sake, for his sake, for honour, for duty, 
for love itself, she must free them both from the enchant- 
ment which is closing round them. Therefore the path 
which hitherto has been ascending through fair meadows 
to the height of rapture, now descends upon the other side. 
It is for Sidney a long road of sighs and tears, rebellions 
and heart-aches, a veritable via dolorosa, ending, however, 
in conquest over self and tranquillity of conscience. For, 
as he sang in happier moments: 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 137 

"For who indeed infelt affection bears, 

So captives to his saint both soul and sense, 
That, wholly hers, all selfness he forbears ; 

Then his desires he learns, his life's course thence." 

(No. 61.) 

In the hour of their parting Stella betrays her own emo- 
tion : 

" Alas, I found that she with me did smart ; 
I saw that tears did in her eyes appear." (No. 87.) 

After this follow five pieces written in absence : 

" Tush, absence ! while thy mists eclipse that light, 
My orphan sense fiies to the inward sight, 
Where memory sets forth the beams of love." (No. 88.) 

" Each day seems long, and longs for long-stayed night ; 

The night, as tedious, woos the approach of day : 

Tired with the dusty toils of busy day, 
Languished with horrors of the silent night, 
Suffering the evils both of day and night, 

While no night is more dark than is my day, 
Nor no day hath less quiet than my night." (No. 89.) 

He gazes on other beauties ; amber-coloured hair, milk- 
white hands, rosy cheeks, lips sweeter and redder than the 



" They please, I do confess, they please mine eyes ; 
But why ? because of you they models be, 
Models, such be wood-globes of glistering skies." 

(No. 91.) 

A friend speaks to him of Stella : 

" You say, forsooth, you left her well of late ; — 

God, think you that satisfies my care ? 

1 would know whether she did sit or walk ; 

How clothed, how waited on ; sighed she, or smiled ; 
Whereof, with whom, how often did she talk ; 

With what pastimes Time's journey she beguiled ; 
V 



138 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

If her lips deigned to sweeten my poor name. — 
Say all ; and all well said, still say the same." 

(No. 92.) 

Interpolated in this group is a more than usually fluent 
sonnet, in which Sidney disclaims all right to call himself 
a poet : 

" Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame, 

Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee ; 

Thine eyes my pride, thy lips my history : 
If thou praise not, all other praise is shame. 
Nor so ambitious am I as to frame 

A nest for my young praise in laurel-tree ; 

In truth I swear I wish not there should be 
Graved in my epitaph a poet's name. 
Nor, if I would, could I just title make 

That any laud thereof to me should grow, 
Without my plumes from other wings I take ; 

For nothing from my wit or will doth flow, 
Since all my words thy beauty doth endite, 
And love doth hold my hand and makes me write." 

(No. 90.) 

The sonnets in absence are closed by a song, which, as 
usual, introduces a new motive. It begins " O dear life," 
and indulges a far too audacious retrospect over the past 
happiness of a lover. If, as seems possible from an allu- 
sion in No. 84, he was indiscreet enough to communicate 
his poems to friends, this lyric may have roused the jeal- 
ousy of Stella's husband and exposed her to hard treat- 
ment or reproaches. At any rate, something he had said 
or done caused her pain, and he breaks out into incoherent 
self-revilings : 

" fate, fault, curse, child of my bliss ! . . . 
Through me, wretch me, even Stella vexed is . . . 
I have (live I, and know this ?) harmed thee . . . 
I cry thy sighs, my dear, thy tears I bleed." (No. 93.) 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 139 

Should any one doubt the sincerity of accent here, let 
him peruse the next seven sonnets, which are written in se- 
quence upon the same theme. 

" Grief, find the words ; for thou hast made my brain 
So dark with misty vapours which arise 
From out thy heavy mould, that inbent eyes 
Can scarce discern the shape of mine own pain." (No. 94.) 

" Yet sighs, dear sighs, indeed true friends you are, 
That do not leave your left friend at the worst ; 
But, as you with my breast I oft have nursed, 
So, grateful now, you wait upon my care. 

" Nay, Sorrow comes with such main rage that he 
Kills his own children, tears, finding that they 
By Love were made apt to consort with me : 
Only, true sighs, you do not go away." (No. 95.) 

The night is heavier, more irksome to him ; and yet he 
finds in it the parallel of his own case : 

" Poor Night in love with Phoebus' light, 
And endlessly despairing of his grace." (No. 97.) 

The bed becomes a place of torment : 

" While the black horrors of the silent night 
Paint woe's black face so lively to my sight, 
That tedious leisure marks each wrinkled line." (No. 98.) 

Only at dawn can lie find ease in slumber. The sonnet, 
in whicli this motive is developed, illustrates Sidney's meth- 
od of veiling definite and simple thoughts in abstruse and 
yet exact phrases. We feel impelled to say that there is 
something Shakespearean in the style. But we must re- 
member that Shakespeare's sonnets were at this time locked 
up within his brain, as the flower is in the bud. 



140 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

" When far-spent night persuades each mortal eye 
To whom nor art nor nature granteth light, 
To lay his then mark- wanting shafts of sight 

Closed with their quivers in sleep's armoury ; 

With windows ope then most my mind doth lie 
Viewing the shape of darkness, and delight 
Takes in that sad hue, which with the inward night 

Of his mazed powers keeps perfect harmony : 

But when birds charm, and that sweet air which is 
Morn's messenger with rose-enamelled skies 

Calls each wight to salute the flower of bliss ; 
In tomb of lids then buried are mine eyes, 

Forced by their lord who is ashamed to find 

Such light in sense with such a darkened mind." (No. 99.) 

Two sonnets upon Stella's illness (to which I should be in- 
clined to add the four upon this topic printed in Constable's 
Diana) may be omitted. But I cannot refrain from quot- 
ing the last song. It is in the form of a dialogue at night 
beneath Stella's window. Though apparently together at 
the Court, he had received express commands from her to 
abstain from her society ; the reason of which can perhaps 
be found in No. 104. This sonnet shows that "envious 
wits "were commenting upon their intimacy ; and Sidney 
had compromised her by wearing stars upon his armour. 
Anyhow he is now reduced to roaming the streets in dark- 
ness, hoping to obtain a glimpse of his beloved. 

" 'Who is it that this dark night 
Underneath my window plaineth ?' 
It is one who from thy sight 
Being, ah, exiled disdaineth 
Every other vulgar light. 

" ( Why, alas, and are you he ? 

Be not yet those fancies changed V 
Dear, when you find change in me, 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 141 

Though from me you be estranged, 
Let my change to ruin be. 



" ' Well, in absence this will die ; 
Leave to see, and leave to wonder.' 
Absence sure will help, if I 
Can learn how myself to sunder 
From what in my heart doth lie. 

" ' But time will these thoughts remove ; 
Time doth work what no man knoweth.' 
Time doth as the subject prove ; 
With time still the affection groweth 
In the faithful turtle-dove. 

" ' What if ye new beauties see ; 
Will not they stir new affection ?' 
I will think they pictures be ; 
Image-like of saints' perfection. 
Poorly counterfeiting thee. 

" ' But your reason's purest light 

Bids you leave such minds to nourish.' 
Dear, do reason no such spite ! 
Never doth thy beauty flourish 
More than in my reason's sight. 

" ' But the wrongs Love bears will make 
Love at length leave undertaking.' 
No ! the more fools it doth shake, 
In a ground of so firm making 
Deeper still they drive the stake. 

" ' Peace, I think that some give ear ; 
Come no more lest I get anger !' 
Bliss, I will my bliss forbear, 
Fearing, sweet, you to endanger ; 
But my soul shall harbour there. 



142 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

11 ' Well, begone ; begone, I say ; 

Lest that Argus' eyes perceive you !' 
unjust is fortune's sway, 
"Which can make me thus to leave you ; 
And from louts to run away !" 

A characteristic but rather enigmatical sonnet follows 
this lyric. It is another night scene. Sidney, watching 
from his window, just misses the sight of Stella as her car- 
riage hurries by : 

" Cursed be the page from whom the bad torch fell ; 
Cursed be the night which did your strife resist ; 
Cursed be the coachman that did drive so fast." (No. 105.) 

Then Astrophel and Stella closes abruptly, with those 
disconnected sonnets, in one of which the word " despair " 
occurring justifies Nash's definition of " the epilogue, De- 
spair " : 

" But soon as thought of thee breeds my delight, 
And my young soul flutters to thee his nest, 
Most rude Despair, my daily unbidden guest, 
Clips straight my wings, straight wraps me in his night." 

(No. 108.) 

Stella's prudent withdrawal of herself from Sidney's 
company begins to work with salutary effect upon his pas- 
sion. As that cools or fades for want of nourishment, so 
the impulse to write declines; and the poet's sincerity is 
nowhere better shown than in the sudden and ragged end- 
ing of his work. I doubt whether the two sonnets on De- 
sire and Love, which Dr. Grosart has transferred from the 
Miscellaneous Poems and printed here as Nos. 109 and 110, 
were really meant to form part of Astrophel and Stella. 
They strike me as retrospective, composed in a mood of 
stern and somewhat bitter meditation on the past, and prob- 



vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 143 

ably after some considerable interval ; yet the Latin epi- 
graph attached to the second has the force of an envoy. 
Moreover, they undoubtedly represent the attitude of mind 
in which Sidney bade farewell to unhallowed love, and 
which enabled him loyally to plight his troth to Frances 
Walsingham. Therefore it will not be inappropriate to 
close the analysis of his love poetry upon this note. No 
one, reading them, will fail to be struck with their resem- 
blance to Shakespeare's superb sonnets upon Lust and 
Death (" The expense of spirit " and " Poor soul, thou cen- 
tre "), which are perhaps the two most completely power- 
ful sonnets in our literature : 

" Thou blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare, 

Fond fancy's scum, and dregs of scattered thought ; 
Band of all evils ; cradle of causeless care ; 

Thou web of will whose end is never wrought ! 
Desire, desire ! I have too dearly bought 

With price of mangled mind thy worthless ware ; 
Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought, 

Who shouldst my mind to higher things prepare. 
But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought ; 

In vain thou mad'st me to vain things aspire ; 

In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire : 
For virtue hath this better lesson taught — 

Within myself to seek my only hire, 

Desiring naught but how to kill desire. 

" Leave me, Love, which reachest but to dust ; 

And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things ; 
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust ; 

Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings. 
Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might 

To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be, 
Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light, 

That doth but shine and give us sight to see. 



144 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. vi. 

take fast hold ; let that light be thy guide 

In this small course which birth draws out to death ; 

And think how evil becometh him to slide, 

Who seeketh heaven and comes of heavenly breath. 

Then farewell, world ! thy uttermost I see : 

Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me !" 



; Splendidis Longum Yaledico Nugis.' 



CHAPTER VII. 



Fulke Greville, touching upon the Arcadia, says that 
Sidney " purposed no monuments of books to the world." 
" If his purpose had been to leave his memory in books, I 
am confident, in the right use of logic, philosophy, history, 
and poesy, nay even in the most ingenious of mechanical 
arts he would have showed such tracts of a searching and 
judicious spirit as the professors of every faculty would 
have striven no less for him than the seven cities did to 
have Homer of their sept. But the truth is : his end was 
not writing, even while he wrote ; nor his knowledge mould- 
ed for tables or schools ; but both his wit and understand- 
ing bent upon his heart, to make himself and others, not 
in words or opinion, but in life and action, good and great." 
" His end was not writing, even while he wrote." This 
is certain ; the whole tenor of Sidney's career proves his 
determination to subordinate self-culture of every kind to 
the ruling purpose of useful public action. It will also be 
remembered that none of his compositions were printed 
during his lifetime or with his sanction. Yet he had re- 
ceived gifts from nature which placed him, as a critic, high 
above the average of his contemporaries. He was no mean 
poet when he sang as love dictated. He had acquired and 

assimilated various stores of knowledge. He possessed an 

>7* 



146 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

I 
exquisite and original taste, a notable faculty for the mar- J 

shalling of arguments, and a persuasive eloquence in expo- 
sition. These qualities inevitably found their exercise in 
writing; and of all Sidney's writings the one with which 
we have to deal now is the ripest. 

Judging by the style alone, I should be inclined to 
place The Defence of Poesy among his later works. But 
we have no certain grounds for fixing the year of its compo- 
sition. Probably the commonly accepted date of 1581 is 
the right one. In the year 1579 Stephen Gosson dedicated 
to Sidney, without asking his permission, an invective 
against " poets, pipers, players, and their excusers," which 
he called The School of Abuse. Spenser observes that Gos- 
son " was for his labour scorned ; if at least it lie in the 
goodness of that nature to scorn. Such folly is it not to 
regard aforehand the nature and quality of him to whom 
we dedicate our books." It is possible therefore that The 
School of Abuse and other treatises emanating from Puri- 
tan hostility to culture, suggested this Apology. Sidney 
rated poetry highest among the functions of the human 
intellect. His name had been used to give authority and 
currency to a clever attack upon poets. He felt the weight 
of argument to be on his side, and was conscious of his 
ability to conduct the cause. With what serenity of spirit, 
sweetness of temper, humour, and easy strength of style — 
at one time soaring to enthusiasm, at another playing with 
his subject, — he performed the task, can only be appreci- 
ated by a close perusal of the essay. It is indeed the 
model for such kinds of composition — a work which com- 
bines the quaintness and the blitheness of Elizabethan lit- 
erature with the urbanity and reserve of a later period. 

Sidney begins by numbering himself among "the paper- 
blurrers," " who, I know not by what mischance, in these 



vii.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 147 

my not old years and idlest times, having slipped into the 
title of a poet, am provoked to say something unto you in 
the defence of that my unelected vocation." Hence it is 
his duty " to make a pitiful defence of poor poetry, which 
from almost the highest estimation of learning, is fallen to 
be the laughing-stock of children." Underlying Sidney's 
main argument we find the proposition that to attack poe- 
try is the same as attacking culture in general ; therefore, 
at the outset, he appeals to all professors of learning: will 
they inveigh against the mother of arts and sciences, the 
" first nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled them 
to feed afterwards of tougher knowledge?" Musaeus, Ho- 
mer, and Hesiod lead the solemn pomp of the Greek writ- 
ers. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in Italy, Gower and 
Chaucer in England came before prose -authors. The 
earliest philosophers, Empedocles and Parmenides, Solon 
and TyrtaHis, committed their metaphysical speculations, 
their gnomic wisdom, their martial exhortation, to verse. 
And even Plato, if rightly considered, was a poet: "in the 
body of his work, though the inside and strength were 
philosophy, the skin as it were, and beauty, depended most 
of poetry." Herodotus called his books by the names of 
the Muses : " both he and all the rest that followed him, 
either stole or usurped of poetry their passionate describ- 
ing of passions, the many particularities of battles which 
no man could affirm." They also put imaginary speeches 
into the months of kings and captains. The very names 
which the Greeks and Romans, " the authors of most of 
our sciences," gave to poets, show the estimation in which 
they held them. The Romans called the poet vates, or 
prophet ; the Greeks 7roirjT))c, or maker, a word, by the way, 
which coincides with English custom. What can be high- 
er in the scale of human understanding than this faculty of 



148 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

making? Sidney enlarges upon its significance, following 
a line of thought which Tasso summed up in one memora- 
ble sentence : " There is no Creator but God and the Poet." 

He now advances a definition, which is substantially the 
same as Aristotle's : " Poesy is an art of imitation ; that is 
to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth : to 
speak metaphorically, a speaking picture ; with this end to 
teach and delight." Of poets there have been three gen- 
eral kinds: first, "they that did imitate the inconceivable 
excellences of God ;" secondly, " they that deal with matter 
philosophical, either moral or natural or astronomical or 
historical ;" thirdly, " right poets . . . which most proper- 
ly do imitate, to teach and delight; and to imitate, borrow 
nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be ; but range only, 
reined with learned discretion, into the divine consideration 
of what may be and should be." The preference given to 
the third kind of poets may be thus explained : The first 
group are limited to setting forth fixed theological con- 
ceptions ; the second have their material supplied them by 
the sciences ; but the third are the makers and creators of 
ideals for warning and example. 

Poets may also be classified according to the several 
species of verse. But this implies a formal and misleading 
limitation. Sidney, like Milton and like Shelley, will not 
have poetry confined to metre : " apparelled verse being 
but an ornament, and no cause to poetry ; since there have 
been many most excellent poets that have never versified, 
and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to 
the name of poets." Xenophon's " Cyroprcdia," the 
" Theagenes and Chariclea" of Heliodorus, are cited as true 
poems; "and yet both these wrote in prose." "It is not 
rhyming and versing that maketh a poet; but it is that 
feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with 



vil] " THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 149 

tbat delightful teaching, which must be the right describ- 
ing note to know a poet by." Truly " the senate of poets 
have chosen verse as their fittest raiment ;" but this they 
did, because they meant, " as in matter they passed all in 
all, so in manner to go beyond them." " Speech, next to 
reason, is the greatest gift bestowed upon mortality ;" and 
verse " which most doth polish that blessing of speech," is, 
therefore, the highest investiture of poetic thought. 

Having thus defined his conception of poetry, Sidney 
inquires into the purpose of all learning. " This purify- 
ing of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of judg- 
ment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call 
learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to 
what immediate end soever it be directed ; the final end 
is to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our de- 
generate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be 
capable of." All the branches of learning subserve the 
royal or architectonic science, " which stands, as I think, 
in the knowledge of a man's self in the ethic and politic 
consideration, with the end of well-doing, and not of well- 
knowing only." If then virtuous action be the ultimate 
object of all our intellectual endeavours, can it be shown 
that the poet contributes above all others to this exalted 
aim ? Sidney thinks it can. 

Omitting divines and jurists, for obvious reasons, he 
finds that the poet's only competitors are philosophers and 
historians. It therefore now behoves him to prove that 
poetry contributes more to the formation of character for 
virtuous action that either philosophy or history. The 
argument is skilfully conducted, and developed with nice 
art ; but it amounts in short to this, that while philosophy 
is too abstract and history is too concrete, poetry takes 
the just path between these extremes, and combines their 



150 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

methods in a harmony of more persuasive force than either. 
"Now doth the peerless poet perform both; for whatso- 
ever the philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a per- 
fect picture of it, by some one whom he presupposeth it 
was done, so as he coupleth the general notion with the 
particular example." " Anger, the Stoics said, was a short 
madness; but let Sophocles bring you Ajax on a stage, 
killing or whipping sheep and oxen, thinking them the 
army of Greeks, with their chieftains Agamemnon and 
Menelaus; and tell me if you have not a more familiar 
insight into anger than finding in the schoolmen his genius 
and difference ?" Even Christ used parables and fables for 
the firmer inculcation of his divine precepts. If philoso- 
phy is too much occupied with the universal, history is 
too much bound to the particular. It dares not go be- 
yond what was, may not travel into what might or should 
be. Moreover, " history being captived to the truth of a 
foolish world, is many times a terror from well-doing, and 
an encouragment to unbridled wickedness." It cannot 
avoid revealing virtue overwhelmed with calamity and vice 
in prosperous condition. Poetry labours not under the 
same restrictions. Her ideals, delightfully presented, en- 
tering the soul with the enchanting strains of music, "set 
the mind forward to that which deserves to be called and 
accounted good." In fine : " as virtue is the most excel- 
lent resting-place for all worldly learning to make his end 
of, so poetry, being the most familiar to teach it, and most 
princely to move towards it, in the most excellent work is 
the most excellent workman." 

Sidney next passes the various species of poems in re- 
view ; the pastoral ; " the lamenting elegiac ;" " the bitter 
but wholesome iambic ;" the satiric ; the comic, " whom 
naughty play-makers and stage-keepers have justly made 



vn.J "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 151 

odious ;" " the high and excellent tragedy, that openeth 
the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are 
covered with tissue — that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, 
and tyrants to manifest their tyrannical humours — that 
with stirring the effects of admiration and commiseration, 
teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon how 
weak foundations gilded roofs are builded ;" the lyric, 
" who with his tuned lyre and well-accorded voice giveth 
praise, the reward of virtue, to virtuous acts — who giveth 
moral precepts and natural problems — who sometimes 
raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in sing- 
ing the lauds of the immortal God ;" the epic or heroic, 
" whose very name, I think, should daunt all backbiters . . . 
which is not only a kind, but the best and most accom- 
plished kind of poetry." He calls upon the detractors of 
poesy to bring their complaints against these several sorts, 
and to indicate in each of them its errors. What they 
may allege in disparagement, he meets with chosen argu- 
ments, among which we can select his apology for the 
lyric. " Certainly, I must confess my own barbarousness : 
I never heard the old song of * Percy and Douglas ' that I 
found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; 
and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no 
rougher voice than rude style ; which being so evil-appar- 
elled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what 
would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of 
Pindar?" 

Having reached this point, partly on the way of argu- 
ment, partly on the path of appeal and persuasion, Sidney 
halts to sum his whole position up in one condensed para- 
graph : 

" Since, then, poetry is of all human learnings the most ancient 
and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have 



152 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

taken their beginnings ; since it is so universal that no learned na- 
tion doth despise it, nor barbarous nation is without it ; since both 
Roman and Greek gave such divine names unto it, the one of prophe- 
sying, the other of making, and that indeed that name of making is fit 
for him, considering, that where all other arts retain themselves with- 
in their subject, and receive, as it were, their being from it, the poet 
only, only biingeth his own stuff, and doth not learn a conceit out of 
a matter, but maketh matter for a conceit ; since neither his descrip- 
tion nor end containeth any evil, the thing described cannot be evil ; 
since his effects be so good as to teach goodness, and delight the 
learners of it ; since therein (namely in moral doctrine, the chief of 
all knowledges) he doth not only far pass the historian, but, for in- 
structing, is well nigh comparable to the philosopher ; for moving, 
leaveth him behind him ; since the Holy Scripture (wherein there is 
no uncleanness) hath whole parts in it poetical, and that even our 
Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it ; since all his kinds 
are not only in their united forms, but in their severed dissections 
fully commendable ; I think, and think I think rightly, the laurel 
crown appointed for triumphant captains, doth worthily, of all other 
learnings, honour the poet's triumph." 

Objections remain to be combated in detail. Sidney- 
chooses one first, which offers no great difficulty. The 
detractors of poetry gird at " rhyming and versing." He 
has already laid it down that " one may be a poet without 
versing, and a versifier without poetry." But he has also 
shown why metrical language should be regarded as the 
choicest and most polished mode of speech. Verse, too, 
fits itself to music more properly than prose, and far exceeds 
it "in the knitting up of the memory." Nor is rhyme to 
be neglected, especially in modern metres ; seeing that it 
strikes a music to the ear. But the enemy advances heav- 
ier battalions. Against poetry he alleges (1) that there 
are studies upon which a man may spend his time more 
profitably; (2) that it is the mother of lies; (3) that it is 
the nurse of abuse, corrupting the fancy, enfeebling manli- 



tit.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 153 

ness, and instilling pestilent desires into the soul ; (4) that 
Plato banished poets from his commonwealth. 

These four points are taken seriatim, and severally an- 
swered. The first is set aside, as involving a begging of 
the question at issue. To the second Sidney replies " par- 
adoxically, but truly I think truly, that of all writers under 
the sun the poet is the least liar; and though he would, as 
a poet, can scarcely be a liar." It is possible to err, and 
to affirm falsehood, in all the other departments of knowl- 
edge; but "for the poet, he nothing affirm eth, and there- 
fore nothing lieth." His sphere is not the region of 
ascertained fact, or of logical propositions, but of imag- 
ination and invention. He labours not " to tell you what 
is, or is not, but what should, or should not be." None is 
so foolish as to mistake the poet's world for literal fact. 
" What child is there, that cometh to a play, and seeing 
Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth be- 
lieve that it is Thebes V The third point is more weighty. 
Are poets blamable, in that they " abuse men's wit, train- 
ing it to a wanton sinfulness and lustful love?" Folk say 
" the comedies rather teach than reprehend amorous con- 
ceits ; they say the lyric is larded with passionate sonnets ; 
the elegiac weeps the want of his mistress ; and that even 
to the heroical Cupid hath ambitiously climbed." Here 
Sidney turns to Love, and, as though himself acknowledg- 
ing that deity, invokes him to defend his own cause. Yet 
let us "grant love of beauty to be a beastly fault," let us 
"grant that lovely name of love to deserve all hateful re- 
proaches," what have the adversaries gained ? Surely they 
have not proved " that poetry abuseth man's wit, but that 
man's wit abuseth poetry." " But what ! shall the abuse 
of a thing make the right odious ?" Does not law, does 
not physic, injure man every day by the abuse of ignorant 



154 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

practisers ? " Doth not God's Word abused breed heres}', 
and His name abused become blasphemy ?" Yet these 
people contend that before poetry came to infect the Eng- 
lish, "our nation had set their heart's delight upon action 
and not imagination, rather doing things worthy to be 
written than writing things fit to be done." But when 
was there that time when the Albion nation was without 
poetry? Of a truth, this argument is levelled against all 
learning and all culture. It is an attack, worthy of Goths 
or Vandals, upon the stronghold of the intellect. As such, 
we might dismiss it. Let us, however, remember that 
"poetry is the companion of camps : I dare undertake, Or- 
lando Furioso or honest King Arthur will never displease 
a soldier ; but the quiddity of ens and prima materia will 
hardly agree with a corselet." Alexander on his Indian 
campaigns left the living Aristotle behind him, but slept 
with the dead Homer in his tent ; condemned Callisthenes 
to death, but yearned for a poet to commemorate his deeds. 
Lastly, they advance Plato's verdict against poets. Plato, 
says Sidney, " I have ever esteemed most worthy of rever- 
ence ; and with good reason, since of all philosophers he 
is the most poetical." Having delivered this sly thrust, he 
proceeds : " first, truly, a man might maliciously object that 
Plato, being a philosopher, was a natural enemy of poets." 
Next let us look into his writings. Has any poet author- 
ised filthiness more abominable than one can find in the 
" Phaedrus " and the " Symposium ?" " Again, a man 
might ask out of what commonwealth Plato doth banish 
them." It is in sooth one where the community of wom- 
en is permitted ; and " little should poetical sonnets be hurt- 
ful, when a man might have what woman he listed." Af- 
ter thus trifling with the subject, Sidney points out that 
Plato was not offended with poetry, but with the abuse of 



vii.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 155 

it. He objected to the crude theology and the monstrous 
ethics of the myth-maters. " So as Plato, banishing the 
abuse not the thing, not banishing it, but giving due hon- 
our to it, shall be our patron and not our adversary." 
Once again he pauses, to recapitulate : 

" Since the excellencies of poesy may be so easily and so justly 
confirmed, and the low creeping objections so soon trodden down ; it 
not being an art of lies, but of true doctrine ; not of effeminateness, 
but of notable stirring of courage ; not of abusing man's wit, but of 
strengthening man's wit ; not banished, but honoured by Plato ; let 
us rather plant more laurels for to ingarland the poets' heads (which 
honour of being laureate, as besides them only triumphant captains 
were, is a sufficient authority to show the price they ought to be 
held in) than suffer the ill-favoured breath of such wrong speakers 
once to blow upon the clear springs of poesy." 

Then he turns to England. Why is it that England, "the 
mother of excellent minds, should be grown so hard a 
stepmother to poets ?" 

11 Sweet poesy, that hath anciently had kings, emperors, senators, 
great captains, such as, besides a thousand others, David, Adrian, 
Sophocles, Germanicus, not only to favour poets, but to be poets : 
and of our nearer times, can present for her patrons, a Robert, King 
of Sicily ; the great King Francis of France ; King James of Scot- 
land ; such cardinals as Bembus and Bibiena ; such famous preach- 
ers and teachers as Beza and Melancthon ; so learned philosophers 
as Fracastorius and Scaliger; so great orators as Pontanus and 
Muretus ; so piercing wits as George Buchanan; so grave counsellors 
as, besides many, but before all, that Hospital of France; than whom, 
I think, that realm never brought forth a more accomplished judg- 
ment more firmly builded upon virtue ; I say, these, with numbers of 
others, not only to read others' poesies, but to poetise for others' 
reading : that poesy, thus embraced in all other places, should only 
find, in our time, a hard welcome in England, I think the very earth 
laments it, and therefore decks our soil with fewer laurels than it 
was accustomed." 



156 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

The true cause is that in England so many incapable folk 
write verses. With the exception of the Mirror of Magis- 
trates, Lord Surrey's Lyrics, and The Shepherd's Kalendar, 
" I do not remember to have seen but few (to speak bold- 
ly) printed, that have poetical sinews in them." At this 
point he introduces a lengthy digression upon the stage, 
which, were we writing a history of the English drama, 
ought to be quoted in full. It is interesting because it 
proves how the theatre occupied Sidney's thoughts ; and 
yet he had not perceived that from the humble plays 
of the people an unrivalled flower of modern art was about 
to emerge. The Defence of Foes?/ was written before 
Marlowe created the romantic drama; before Shakespeare 
arrived in London. It was written in all probability be- 
fore its author could have attended the representation of 
Greene's and Peele's best plays. Gorboduc, which he 
praises moderately and censures with discrimination, seem- 
ed to him the finest product of dramatic art in England, 
because it approached the model of Seneca and the Italian 
tragedians. For the popular stage, with its chaos of tragic 
and comic elements, its undigested farrago of romantic in- 
cidents and involved plots, he entertained the scorn of a 
highly-educated scholar and a refined gentleman. Yet no 
one, let us be sure, would have welcomed Othello and The 
Merchant of Venice, Volpone and A Woman Killed with 
Kindness, more enthusiastically than Sidney, had his life 
been protracted through the natural span of mortality. 

Having uttered his opinion frankly on the drama, he at- 
tacks the " courtesan-like painted affectation " of the Eng- 
lish at his time. Far-fetched words, alliteration, euphuistic 
similes from stones and beasts and plants, fall under his hon- 
est censure. Lie mentions no man. But be is clearly aim- 
ing at the school of Lyly and the pedants ; for he pertinent- 



yn.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 157 

ly observes : " I have found in divers small-learned courtiers 
a more sound style than in some professors of learning." 
Language should be used, not to trick out thoughts with 
irrelevant ornaments or to smother them in conceits, but to 
make them as clear and natural as words can do. It is a 
sin against our mother speech to employ these meretricious 
arts; for whoso will look dispassionately into the matter, 
shall convince himself that English, both in its freedom 
from inflections and its flexibility of accent, is aptest of all 
modern tongues to be the vehicle of simple and of beauti- 
ful utterance. 

The peroration to The Defence of Poesy is an argument 
addressed to the personal ambition of the reader. It some- 
what falls below the best parts of the essay in style, and 
makes no special claim on our attention. From the forego- 
ing analysis it will be seen that Sidney attempted to cover 
a wide field, combining a philosophy of art with a practical 
review of English literature. Much as the Italians had re- 
cently written upon the theory of poetry, I do not remem- 
ber any treatise which can be said to have supplied the 
material or suggested the method of this apology. England, 
of course, at that time was destitute of all but the most 
meagre textbooks on the subject. Great interest therefore 
attaches to Sidney's discourse as the original outcome of 
his studies, meditations, literary experience, and converse 
with men of parts. Though we may not be prepared to 
accept each of his propositions, though some will demur to 
his conception of the artist's moral aim, and others to his 
inclusion of prose fiction in the definition of poetry, while 
all will agree in condemning his mistaken dramatic theory, 
none can dispute the ripeness, mellowness, harmony, and 
felicity of mental gifts displayed in work at once so concise 
and so compendious. It is indeed a pity that English lit- 



158 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

erature then furnished but slender material for criticism. 
When we remember that, among the poems of the English 
Renaissance, only Surrey's Lyrics, Gorboduc, the Mirror 
of Magistrates, and The Shepherd's Kalendar could be 
praised with candour (and I think Sidney was right in this 
judgment), we shall be better able to estimate his own high 
position, and our mental senses will be dazzled by the achieve- 
ments of the last three centuries. Exactly three centuries 
have elapsed since Sidney fell at Zutphen ; and who shall 
count the poets of our race, stars differing indeed in glory, 
but stars that stream across the heavens of song from him 
to us in one continuous galaxy ? 

Sir Philip Sidney was not only eminent as pleader, crit- 
ic, and poet. He also ranked as the patron and protector 
of men of letters. " He was of a very munificent spirit," 
says Aubrey, " and liberal to all lovers of learning, and to 
those that pretended to any acquaintance with Parnassus; 
insomuch that he was cloyed and surfeited with the poet- 
asters of those days." This sentence is confirmed by the 
memorial verses written on his death, and by the many 
books which were inscribed with his name. A list of these 
may be read in Dr. Zouch's Life. It is enough for our 
purpose to enumerate the more distinguished. To Sidney, 
Spenser dedicated the first fruits of his genius, and Hak- 
luyt the first collection of his epoch-making Voyages. 
Henri Etienne, who was proud to call himself the friend of 
Sidney, placed his 1576 edition of the Greek Testament 
and his 1581 edition of Herodian under the protection of 
his name. Lord Brooke, long after his friend's death, ded- 
icated his collected works to Sidney's memory. 

Of all these tributes to his love of learning the most in- 
teresting in my opinion is that of Giordano Bruno. This 
Titan of impassioned speculation passed two years in Lon- 



vii.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 159 

don between 1583 and 1585. Here he composed, and 
here he printed, his most important works in the Italian 
tongue. Two of these he presented, with pompous com- 
mendatory epistles, to Sir Philip Sidney. They were his 
treatise upon Ethics, styled Lo Spaccio della Bestia Trion- 
fante^ and his discourse upon the philosophic enthusiasm, 
entitled Gil Eroici Furori. That Bruno belonged to Sid- 
ney's circle, is evident from the graphic account he gives 
of a supper at Fulke Greville's house, in the dialogue called 
La Cena delle Ceneri. His appreciation of " the most il- 
lustrious and excellent knight's " character transpires in the 
following phrase from one of his dedications : " the natural 
bias of your spirit, which is truly heroical." Those who 
know what the word eroica implied for Bruno, not only of 
personal courage, but of sustained and burning spiritual pas- 
sion, will appreciate this eulogy by one of the most penetrat- 
ing and candid, as he was the most unfortunate of truth's 
martyrs. Had the proportions of my work justified such 
a digression, I would eagerly have collected from Bruno's 
Italian discourses those paragraphs which cast a vivid light 
upon literary and social life in England. But these belong 
rather to Bruno's than to Sidney's biography. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 

After Sidney's marriage there remained but little more 
than three years of life to him. The story of this period 
may be briefly told. Two matters of grave import occupied 
his mind. These were : first, the menacing attitude of 
Spain and the advance of the Counter-Reformation ; sec- 
ondly, a project of American Colonisation. The suspicious 
death of the Duke of Anjou, followed by the murder of 
the Prince of Orange in 1584, rendered Elizabeth's interfer- 
ence in the Low Countries almost imperative. Philip II., 
assisted by the powers of Catholicism, and served in secret 
by the formidable Company of Jesus, threatened Europe with 
the extinction of religious and political liberties. It was 
known that, sooner or later, he must strike a deadly blow 
at England. The Armada loomed already in the distance. 
But how was he to be attacked? Sidney thought that 
Elizabeth would do well to put herself at the head of a 
Protestant alliance against what Fulke Greville aptly styled 
the " masked triplicity between Spain, Rome, and the Jes- 
uitical faction of France." He also strongly recommended 
an increase of the British navy and a policy of protecting 
the Huguenots in their French seaports. But he judged 
the Netherlands an ill-chosen field for fio-htinor the main 
duel out with Spain. There, Philip was firmly seated in 



chap, viii.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 161 

well-furnished cities, where he could mass troops and muni- 
tions of war at pleasure. To maintain an opposition on 
the side of Holland was of course necessary. But the re- 
ally vulnerable point in the huge Spanish empire seemed 
to him to be its ill-defended territory in the West Indies. 
Let then the Protestant League, if possible, be placed upon 
a firmer basis. Let war in the Low Countries be prosecut- 
ed without remission. But, at the same time, let the Eng- 
lish use their strongest weapon, attack by sea. Descents 
might be made from time to time upon the Spanish ports, 
as Drake had already harried Vera Cruz, and was afterwards 
to fall on Cadiz. Buccaneering and filibustering expedi- 
tions against the Spanish fleets which brought back treas- 
ure across the Indian main, were not to be contemned. 
But he believed that the most efficient course would be to 
plant a colony upon the American continent, which should 
at the same time be a source of strength to England and a 
hostile outpost for incursions into the Spanish settlements. 
Fulke Greville has devoted a large portion of his Life to the 
analysis of Sidney's opinions on these subjects. He sums 
them up as follows : " Upon these and the like assumptions 
he resolved there were but two ways left to frustrate this 
ambitious monarch's designs. The one, that which divert- 
ed Hannibal, and by setting fire on his own house made 
him draw in his spirits to comfort his heart; the other, 
that of Jason, by fetching away his golden fleece and not 
suffering any one man quietly to enjoy that which every 
man so much affected." 

In the autumn of 1584 Sidney sat again in the House of 
Commons, where he helped to forward the bill for Raleigh's 
expedition to Virginia. This in fact was an important step 
in the direction of his favourite scheme ; for his view of the 
American colony was that it should be a real " plantation, 
8 



162 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

not like an asylum for fugitives, a helium piraticum for 
banditti, or any such base ramas of people ; but as an em- 
porium for the confluence of all nations that love or profess 
any kind of virtue or commerce." Parliament next year 
had to take strong measures against the Jesuits, who were 
already fomenting secret conspiracies to dethrone or assas- 
sinate the queen. The session ended in March, and in April 
Raleigh started for the New World. Three months later 
Sidney received a commission to share the Mastership of 
the Ordnance with his uncle Warwick. He found that de- 
partment of the public service in a lamentable plight, owing 
to Elizabeth's parsimony ; and soon after his appointment, 
he risked her displeasure by firmly pressing for a thorough 
replenishment of the stores upon which England's efficiency 
as a belligerent would depend. 

It was probably in this year that Sidney took up his 
pen to defend his uncle Leicester against the poisonous 
libel, popularly known as Leicester's Commonwealth, and 
generally ascribed to the Jesuit Parsons. We possess the 
rough draft of his discourse, which proves convincingly 
that he at least was persuaded of the earl's innocence. He 
does not even deign to answer the charges of " dissimulation, 
hypocrisy, adultery, falsehood, treachery, poison, rebellion, 
treason, cowardice, atheism, and what not," except by a flat 
denial, and a contemptuous interrogation : " what is it .lse 
but such a bundle of railings, as if it came from the mouth 
of some half drunk scold in a tavern ?" By far the larger 
portion of the defence is occupied with an elaborate exhibi- 
tion of the pedigree and honours of the House of Dudley, 
in reply to the hint that Edmund, Leicester's grandfather, 
was basely born. Sidney, as we have seen, set great store 
on his own descent from the Dudleys, which he rated high- 
er than his paternal ancestry ; and this aspersion on their 



viii.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 163 

origin inspired him with unmeasured anger. At the close 
of the pamphlet he throws down the glove to his anony- 
mous antagonist, and defies him to single combat. " And, 
from the date of this writing, imprinted and published, I 
will three months expect thine answer." Horace Walpole 
was certainly not justified in calling this spirited, but ill- 
balanced composition, " by far the best specimen of his 
abilities." 

June 1585 marked an era in the foreign policy of Eliza- 
beth. She received a deputation from the Netherlands, 
who offered her the sovereignty of the United Provinces if 
she would undertake their cause. This offer she refused. 
But the recent adhesion of the French Crown to what was 
called the Holy League, rendered it necessary that she 
should do something. Accordingly, she agreed to send 6000 
men to the Low Countries, holding Flushing and Brill with 
the Castle of Rammekins in pledge for the repayment of 
the costs of this expedition. Sidney began now to be 
spoken of as the most likely governor of Flushing. But 
at this moment his thoughts were directed rather to the 
New World than to action in Flanders. We have already 
seen why he believed it best to attack Spain there. A let- 
ter written to him by Ralph Lane from Virginia echoes 
his own views upon this topic. The governor of the new 
plantation strongly urged him to head a force against what 
Greville called " that rich and desert West Indian mine." 
Passing by the islands of St. John and Hispaniola, Lane 
had observed their weakness. "How greatly a small force 
would garboil him here, when two of his most richest and 
strongest islands took such alarms of us, not only landing, 
but dwelling upon them, with only a hundred and twenty 
men, I refer it to your judgment." Sidney, moreover, had 
grown to distrust Burleigh's government of England. 



164 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

"Nature," says Grevillc, " guiding his 'eyes first to his na- 
tive country, he found greatness of worth and place coun- 
terpoised there by the arts of power and favour. The 
stirring spirits sent abroad as fuel, to keep the flame far 
off; and the effeminate made judges of dangers which they 
fear, and honour which they understand not." He saw 
" how the idle-censuring faction at home had won ground 
of the active adventurers abroad ;" he perceived the queen's 
"governors to sit at home in their soft chairs, playing fast 
and loose with them that ventured their lives abroad." 
All these considerations put together made him more than 
lukewarm about the Netherlands campaign, and less than 
eager to take office under so egotistical an administration. 
It was his cherished scheme to join in some private en- 
terprise, the object of which should be the enfeeblement 
of Spain and the strengthening of England beyond the 
Atlantic. 

The thoughts which occupied his mind took definite 
shape in the summer of 1585. "The next step which he 
intended into the world was an expedition of his own pro- 
jecting ; wherein he fashioned the whole body, with pur- 
pose to become head of it himself. I mean the last 
employment but one of Sir Francis Drake to the West 
Indies." With these words Greville introduces a minute 
account of Sidney's part in that famous adventure. He 
worked hard at the project, stirring up the several passions 
which might induce men of various sympathies to furnish 
assistance by money or by personal participation. 

"To martial men lie opened wide the door of sea and land for 
fame and conquest. To the nobly ambitious, the far stage of Ameri- 
ca to win honour in. To the religious divines, besides a new apostol- 
ical calling of the lost heathen to the Christian faith, a large field of 
reducing poor Christians misled by the idolatry of Rome to their 



viil] . LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 1G5 

mother primitive church. To the ingeniously industrious, variety of 
natural riches for new mysteries and manufactures to work upon. 
To the merchant, with a simple people a fertile and unexhausted 
earth. To the fortune - bound, liberty. To the curious, a fruitful 
work of innovation. Generally, the word gold was an attractive ada- 
mant to make men venture that which they have in hope to grow rich 
by that which they have not." 

Moreover lie " won thirty gentlemen of great blood and 
state here in England, every man to sell one hundred 
pounds land" for fitting out a fleet. While firmly resolved 
to join the first detachment which should sail from Plym- 
outh, he had to keep his plans dark; for the queen would 
not hear of his eno-amno- in such ventures. It was accord- 
ingly agreed between him and Sir Francis that the latter 
should go alone to Plymouth, and that Sir Philip should 
meet him there upon some plausible excuse. When they 
had weighed anchor, Sidney was to share the chief com- 
mand with Drake. Sir Francis in due course of time set 
off; and early in September he sent a message praying ur- 
gently for his associate's presence. It so happened that 
just at this time Don Antonio of Portugal was expected at 
Plymouth, and Philip obtained leave to receive him there. 
From this point I shall let Fulke Greville tell the story in 
his own old-fashioned lano-uao-e : — 

o o 

" Yet I that had the honour, as of being bred with him from his 
youth, so now by his own choice of all England to be his loving and 
beloved Achates in this journey, observing the countenance of this 
gallant mariner more exactly than Sir Philip's leisure served him to 
do, after we were laid in bed acquainted him with my observation of 
the discountenance and depression which appeared in Sir Francis, as 
if our coming were both beyond his expectation and desire. Never- 
theless that ingenuous spirit of Sir Philip's, though apt to give me 
credit, yet not apt to discredit others, made him suspend his own and 
labour to change or qualify by judgment ; till within some few days 



166 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

after, finding the ships neither ready according to promise, nor pos- 
sibly to be made ready in many days, and withal observing some 
sparks of false fire breaking out from his yoke- fellow daily, it pleased 
him in the freedom of our friendship to return me my own stock 
with interest. 

" All this while Don Antonio landed not ; the fleet seemed to us, 
like the weary passengers' inn, still to go farther from our desires ; 
letters came from the Court to hasten it away ; but it may be the 
leaden feet and nimble thoughts of Sir Francis wrought in the day, 
and unwrought by night, while he watched an opportunity to discov- 
er us without being discovered. 

" For within a few days after, a post steals up to the Court, upon 
whose arrival an alarm is presently taken : messengers sent away to 
stay us, or if we refused, to stay the whole fleet. Notwithstanding 
this first Mercury, his errand being partly advertised to Sir Philip be- 
forehand, was intercepted upon the way ; his letters taken from him 
by two resolute soldiers in mariners' apparel, brought instantly to 
Sir Philip, opened and read. The next was a more imperial mandate, 
carefully cons-eyed and delivered to himself by a peer of this realm; 
carrying with it in the one hand grace, the other thunder. The grace 
was an offer of an instant employment under his uncle, then going 
general into the Low Countries ; against which as though he would 
gladly have demurred, yet the confluence of reason, transcendency of 
power, fear of staying the whole fleet, made him instantly sacrifice 
all these self-places to the duty of obedience." 

In plain words, then, Sir Francis Drake, disliking the 
prospect of an equal in command, played Sir Philip Sidney 
false by sending private intelligence to Court. The queen 
expressed her will so positively that Sidney had to yield. 
At the same time it was settled that he should go into the 
Netherlands, under his uncle Leicester, holding her Majes- 
ty's commission as Governor of Flushing and Rammekins. 
By this rapid change of events his destiny was fixed. 
Drake set sail on the 14th of September. Two months 
later, on the 16th of November, Sidney left England for 
his post in the Low Countries. I ought here to add that 



viil] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 167 

at some time during- this busy summer his daughter Eliza- 
beth, afterwards Countess of Rutland, was born. 

Sidney's achievements in the Netherlands, except as 
forming part of his short life, claim no particular atten- 
tion. He was welcomed by Count Maurice of Nassau, the 
eldest son of William, Prince of Orange ; and gleanings 
from letters of the time show that folk expected much 
from his activity and probity. But he enjoyed narrow 
scope for the employment of his abilities. Rammekins, the 
fortress which commanded Flushing, was inadequately fur- 
nished and badly garrisoned. The troops were insufficient, 
and so ill-paid that mutinies were always imminent. In 
one of his despatches, urgently demanding fresh supplies, 
he says : " I am in a garrison as much able to command 
Flushing as the Tower is to answer for London." The 
Dutch government did not please him : he found " the peo- 
ple far more careful than the government in all things 
touching the public welfare." With the plain speech that 
was habitual to him, he demanded more expenditure of 
English money. This irritated the queen, and gave his 
enemies at Court occasion to condemn him in his absence 
as ambitious and proud. He began to show signs of im- 
patience with Elizabeth. "If her Majesty were the fount- 
ain, I would fear, considering what I daily find, that we 
should wax dry." This bitter taunt he vented in a letter 
to Sir Francis Walsingham. Meanwhile the Earl of Leices- 
ter arrived upon the 10th of December, and made mat- 
ters worse. He laid himself out for honours of all sorts, 
accepting the title of Governor-General over the United 
Provinces, and coquetting with some vague scheme of being 
chosen for their sovereign. Imposing but impotent, Leicester 
had no genius for military affairs. The winter of 1585-86 
dragged through, with nothing memorable to relate. 



168 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

The following season, however, was marked by several 
important incidents in Philip Sidney's private life. First, 
Lady Sidney joined her husband at Flushing. Then on 
the 5th of May Sir Henry Sidney died in the bishop's 
palace at Worcester. His body was embalmed and sent 
to Penshurst. His heart was buried at Ludlow ; his en- 
trails in the precincts of Worcester Cathedral. So passed 
from life Elizabeth's sturdy servant in Ireland and Wales ; 
a man, as T conceive him, of somewhat limited capacity 
and stubborn temper, but true as steel, and honest in the 
discharge of very trying duties. Later in the same year, 
upon the 9th of August, Lady Mary Sidney yielded up her 
gentle spirit. Of her there is nothing to be written but 
the purest panegyric. Born of the noblest blood, surviv- 
ing ambitious relatives who reached at royalty and perished, 
losing health and beauty in the service of an exacting 
queen, suffering poverty at Court, supporting husband and 
children through all trials with wise counsel and sweet 
hopeful temper, she emerges with pale lustre from all the 
actors of that time to represent the perfect wife and moth- 
er in a lady of unpretending, but heroic, dignity. Sidney 
would have been the poorer for the loss of these parents, 
if his own life had been spared. As it was, he survived 
his mother but two months. 

In July he distinguished himself by the surprise and 
c-apture of the little town of Axel. Leicester rewarded 
him for this service with the commission of colonel. Eliza- 
beth resented his promotion. She wished the colonelcy for 
Count Ilohenlohe, or Hollock, a brave but drunken soldier. 
Walsingham wrote upon the occasion : " She layeth the 
blame upon Sir Philip, as a thing by him ambitiously 
sought. I see her Majesty very apt upon every light oc- 
casion to find fault with him." Ambition, not of the 



Tin.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 169 

vaulting kind, which " overleaps itself," but of a steady, 
persistent, intellectual stamp, was, indeed, I think, the lead- 
ing quality in Sidney's nature. From the courtiers of the 
period, the Leicesters, Oxfords, Ormonds, Hattons, and so 
forth, this mark of character honourably distinguished him. 
And, if he had but lived, Elizabeth, who judged her serv- 
ants with some accuracy, might by judicious curbing and 
parsimonious encouragement have tempered the fine steel 
of his frailty into a blade of trenchant edge. There was 
nothing ignoble, nothing frivolous in his ambition. It was 
rather of such mettle as made the heroes of the common- 
wealth : pure and un- self -seeking, but somewhat acrid. 
And now he fretted himself too much because of evil- 
doers; impatiently demanded men and munitions from Eng- 
land ; vented his bile in private letters against Leicester. 
Sidney was justified by events. The campaign dragged 
negligently on ; and the Commander of the Forces paid 
more attention to banquets and diplomatic intrigues than 
to the rough work of war. But the tone adopted by him 
in his irritation was hardly prudent for so young and so 
comparatively needy a gentleman. 

Whatever he found to blame in Leicester's conduct of 
affairs, Sidney did not keep aloof; but used every effort 
to inspire his uncle with some of his own spirit. At the 
end of August they were both engaged in reducing the lit- 
tle fort of Doesburg on the Yssel, which had importance 
as the key to Zutphen. It fell upon the 2d of September ; 
and on the 13th Zutphen was invested — Lewis William of 
Nassau, Sir John Norris, and Sir Philip Sidney command- 
ing the land-forces, and Leicester blockading the approach 
by water. The Duke of Parma, acting for Spain, did all 
he could to reinforce the garrison with men and provisions. 
News came upon the 21st to Leicester that a considerable 
8* 



170 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

convoy was at Deventer waiting an opportunity to enter 
the town. He resolved to cut off these supplies, and fixed 
an early hour of the 22d, which was a Thursday, for this 
operation. We have a letter, the last which Sidney penned 
before his fatal wound, dated from the camp at Zutphen 
upon the morning of the engagement. It recommends 
Richard Smyth, " her Majesty's old servant," to Sir Francis 
Walsingham, and is one among several writings of the kind 
which show how mindful Sidney was of humble friends 
and people in distress. The 22d of September opened 
gloomily. So thick a mist covered the Flemish lowlands 
that a man could not see farther than ten paces. Sidney, 
leading a troop of two hundred horsemen, pushed his way 
up to the walls of Zutphen. Chivalrous punctilio caused him 
to be ill-defended, for meeting Sir William Pelham in light 
armour, he threw off his cuisses, and thus exposed himself 
to unnecessary danger. The autumn fog, which covered 
every object, suddenly dispersed; and the English now 
found themselves confronted by a thousand horsemen of 
the enemy, and exposed to the guns of the town. They 
charged, and Sidney's horse was killed under him. He 
mounted another, and joined in the second charge. Rein- 
forcements came up, and a third charge was made, during 
which he received a wound in the left leg. The bullet, 
which some supposed to have been poisoned, entered above 
the knee, broke the bone, and lodged itself high up in the 
thigh. His horse took fright, and carried him at a gallop 
from the field. He kept his seat, however ; and when the 
animal was brought to order, had himself carried to Leices- 
ter's station. On the way occurred the incident so well- 
known to every one who is acquainted with his name. 
"Being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for drink, 
which was presently brought him ; but as he was putting 



vni.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 171 

the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor soldier carried along, 
who had eaten his last at the same feast, ghastly casting 
up his eyes at the bottle, which Sir Philip perceiving, took 
it from his head before he drank, and delivered it to the 
poor man, with these words, Thy necessity is yet greater 
than mine. And when he had pledged this poor soldier, 
he was presently carried to Arnheim." 

At Arnheim he lay twenty -five days in the house of a 
lady named Gruitthueisens. At first the surgeons who at- 
tended him had good hopes of his recovery. Ten days 
after the event Leicester wrote to Walsingham : "All the 
worst days be passed, and he amends as well as possible in 
this time." Friends were around him — his wife, his broth- 
ers Robert and Thomas, and the excellent minister, George 
Gifford, whom he sent for on the 30th. The treatment of 
the wound exposed him to long and painful operations, 
which he bore with a sweet fortitude that moved the sur- 
geons to admiration. With Gifford and other godly men 
he held discourses upon religion and the future of the soul. 
He told Gifford that " he had walked in a vague course ; 
and these words he spake with great vehemence both of 
speech and gesture, and doubled it to the intent that it 
might be manifest how unfeignedly he meant to turn more 
thoughts unto God than ever." It is said that he amused 
some hours of tedious leisure by composing a poem on La 
Cuisse Eompue, which was afterwards sung to soothe him. 
He also contrived to write "a large epistle in very pure 
and eloquent Latin " to his friend Belarius the divine. 
Both of these are lost. 

As time wore on it appeared that the cure was not ad- 
vancing. After the sixteenth day, says Greville, " the very 
shoulder-bones of this delicate patient were worn through 
his skin." He suffered from sharp pangs which " stang 



172 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

him by fits," and felt internally that his case was desperate. 
" One morning lifting up the clothes for change and ease 
of his body, he smelt some extraordinary noisome savour 
about him, differing from oils and salves, as he conceived." 
This he judged, and judged rightly, to be the sign of "in- 
ward mortification, and a welcome messenger of death." 
Thereupon he called the ministers into his presence, " and 
before them made such a confession of Christian faith as 
no book but the heart can truly and feelingly deliver." 
Death had its terrors for his soul ; but he withstood them 
manfully, seeking peace and courage in the sacrifice of all 
earthly affections. " There came to my mind," he said to 
Gifford, " a vanity in which I delighted, whereof I had not 
rid myself. I rid myself of it, and presently my joy and 
comfort returned." Soon he was able to declare : " I would 
not change my joy for the empire of the world." Yet, up 
to the very last, he did not entirely despair of life. This 
is proved by the very touching letter he wrote to John 
Wier, a famous physician, and a friend of his. It runs 
thus in Latin : " Mi Wiere, veni, veni. De vita periclitor 
et te cupio. Nee vivus, nee mortuus, ero ingratus. Plura 
non possum, sed obnixe oro ut festines. Yale. Tuus Ph. 
Sidney." " My dear friend Wier, come, come. I am in 
peril of my life, and long for you. Neither living nor dead 
shall I be ungrateful. I cannot write more, but beg you 
urgently to hurry. Farewell. Your Ph. Sidney." In this 
way several days passed slowly on. He had made his will 
upon the 30th of September. This he now revised, adding 
a codicil in which he remembered many friends and serv- 
ants. The document may be read in Collins' Sidney Pa- 
pers. Much of it is occupied with provisions for the child, 
with which his wife was pregnant at this time, and of 
which she was afterwards delivered still-born. But the 



viii.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 173 

thoughtful tenor of the whole justifies Greville in saying 
that it " will ever remain for a witness to the world that 
those sweet and large affections in him could no more be 
contracted with the narrowness of pain, grief, or sickness, 
than any sparkle of our immortality can be privately buried 
in the shadow of death." 

Reflecting upon the past he exclaimed: "All things in 
my former life have been vain, vain, vain." In this mood 
he bade one of his friends burn the Arcadia ; but we know 
not whether he expressed the same wish about Astrophel 
and Stella. On the morning of the 17th of October it 
was clear that he had but a few hours to live. His brother 
Robert gave way to passionate grief in his presence, which 
Philip gently stayed, taking farewell of him in these mem- 
orable words : " Love my memory, cherish my friends ; 
their faith to me may assure you they are honest. But 
above all, govern your will and affections by the will and 
word of your Creator; in me beholding the end of this 
world with all her vanities." Shortly afterwards he sank 
into speechlessness, and the bystanders thought that what 
he had greatly dreaded — namely, death without conscious- 
ness, would befall him. Yet when they prayed him for 
some sign of his "inward joy and consolation in God," he 
held his hand up and stretched it forward for a little while. 
About two o'clock in the afternoon he again responded to 
a similar appeal by setting his hands together in the atti- 
tude of prayer upon his breast, and thus he expired. 

Sidney's death sent a thrill through Europe. Leicester, 
who truly loved him, wrote upon the 25th, in words of 
passionate grief, to Walsingham. Elizabeth declared that 
she had lost her mainstay in the struggle with Spain. 
Duplessis Mornay bewailed his loss " not for England only, 
but for all Christendom." Mendoza, the Spanish secre- 



174 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

tary, said that though he could not but rejoice at the loss 
to his master of such a foe, he yet lamented to see Chris- 
tendom deprived of so great a light, and bewailed poor 
widowed England. The Netherlanders begged to be al- 
lowed to keep his body, and promised to erect a royal 
monument to his memory, "yea, though the same should 
cost half-a-ton of gold in the building." But this petition 
was rejected; and the corpse, after embalmment, was re- 
moved to Flushing. There it lay eight days; and on the 
1st of November the English troops accompanied it with 
military honours to the Black Prince, a vessel which had 
belonged to Sidney. On the 5th it reached Tower Hill, 
and on the 16th of February it was buried with pomp in 
St. Paul's. This long delay between the landing in Lon- 
don and the interment arose from certain legal complica- 
tions, which rendered the discharge of Sidney's debts dif- 
ficult. Walsingham told Leicester that he would have to 
" pay for him about six thousand pounds, which I do assure 
your Lordship hath brought me into a most desperate and 
hard state, which I weigh nothing in respect of the loss of 
the gentleman who was my chief worldly comfort." Lest 
this should seem to reflect ill upon Sidney's character, it 
must be added that he had furnished Walsingham with a 
power of attorney to sell land, and had expressly consid- 
ered all his creditors in his will. But his own death hap- 
pened so close upon his father's, and the will was so im- 
perfect touching the sale of land, that his wishes could not 
be carried into effect. This, added Walsingham, " doth 
greatly afflict me, that a gentleman that hath lived so un- 
spotted in reputation, and had so great care to see all men 
satisfied, should be so exposed to the outcry of his credit- 
ors." When the obstacles had been surmounted the fu- 
neral was splendid and public. And the whole nation went 



vin.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 1*75 

into mourning. " It was accounted a sin," says the author 
of The Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney, " for any 
gentleman of quality, for many months after, to appear at 
Court or City in any light or gaudy apparel." 

I have told the story of Sidney's last days briefly, using 
the testimony of those who knew him best, or who were 
present at his death-bed. Comment would be superfluous. 
There is a singular beauty in the uncomplaining, thought- 
ful, manly sweetness of the young hero cut off in his prime. 
Numberless minute touches, of necessity omitted here, 
confirm the opinion that Sidney possessed unique charm 
and exercised a spell over those who came in contact with 
him. All the letters and reports which deal with that long 
agony breathe a heartfelt tenderness, which proves how 
amiable and how admirable he was. The character must 
have been well-nigh perfect which inspired persons so dif- 
ferent as the Earl of Leicester, George Gifford, and Fulke 
Greville with the same devoted love. We have not to deal 
merely with the record of an edifying end, but with the 
longing retrospect of men whose best qualities had been 
drawn forth by sympathy with his incomparable good- 
ness. 

The limits of this book make it impossible to give an 
adequate account of the multitudinous literary tributes to 
Sidney's memory, which appeared soon after his decease. 
Oxford contributed Exequiae and Peplus; Cambridge shed 
Lacrymae ; great wits and little, to the number it is said 
of some two hundred, expressed their grief with more or 
less felicity of phrase. For us the value of these elegiac 
verses is not great. But it is of some importance to know 
what men of weight and judgment said of him. His dear- 
est and best friend has been so often quoted in these pages 
that we are now familiar with Greville's life-Ions; adora- 



176 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap.' 

tion. Yet I cannot omit the general character he gives of 
Sidney : 

"Indeed he was a true model of worth ; a man fit for conquest, 
plantation, reformation, or what action soever is greatest and hardest 
among men : withal, such a lover of mankind and goodness, that 
whoever had any real parts in him, found comfort, participation, and 
protection to the uttermost of his power : like Zephyrus, he giving 
life where he blew. The universities abroad and at home accounted 
him a general Mecaenas of learning ; dedicated their books to him ; 
and communicated every invention or improvement of knowledge 
with him. Soldiers honoured him, and were so honoured by him as 
no man thought he marched under the true banner of Mars that had 
not obtained Sir Philip Sidney's approbation. Men of affairs in most 
parts of Christendom entertained correspondency with him. But 
what speak I of these, with whom his own ways and ends did con- 
cur ? Since, to descend, his heart and capacity were so large that 
there was not a cunning painter, a skilful engineer, an excellent mu- 
sician, or any other artificer of extraordinary fame, that made not 
himself known to this famous spirit, and found him his true friend 
without hire, and the common rendezvous of worth in his time." 

Thomas Nash may be selected as the representative of 
literary men who honoured Sidney. 

" Gentle Sir Philip Sidney !" he exclaims ; " thou knewest what be- 
longed to a scholar; thou knewest what pains, what toil, what travail, 
conduct to perfection ; well couldst thou give every virtue his encour- 
agement, every art his due, every writer his desert, cause none more 
virtuous, witty, or learned than thyself. But thou art dead in thy 
grave, and hast left too few successors of thy glory, too few to cher- 
ish the sons of the Muses, or water those budding hopes with their 
plenty, which thy bounty erst planted." 

Lastly, we will lay the ponderous laurel-wreath, woven by 
grave Camden, on his tomb : 

" This is that Sidney, who, as Providence seems to have sent him 
into the world to give the present age a specimen of the ancients, so 
did it on a sudden recall him, and snatch him from us, as more wor- 



Tin.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. Ill 

thy of heaven than earth ; thus where virtue comes to perfection, it 
is gone in a trice, and the best things are never lasting. Rest then 
in peace, Sidney, if I may be allowed this address ! We will not 
celebrate your memory with tears bst admiration ; whatever we loved 
in you, as the best of authors speaks of that best governor of Britain, 
whatever we admired in you, still continues, and will continue in the 
memories of men, the revolutions of ages, and the annals of time. 
Many, as inglorious and ignoble, are buried in oblivion ; but Sidney 
shall live to all posterity. For, as the Grecian poet has it, virtue's 
beyond the reach of fate." 

The note of tenderness, on which I have already dwelt, 
sounds equally in these sentences of the needy man of 
letters and the learned antiquarian. 

It would be agreeable, if space permitted, to turn the 
pages of famous poets who immortalised our hero ; to 
glean high thoughts from Constable's sonnets to Sir Philip 
Sidney's soul; to dwell on Raleigh's well-weighed qua- 
trains ; to gather pastoral honey from Spenser's Astrophel, 
or graver meditations from his Ruins of Time. But these 
are in the hands of every one ; and now, at the close of 
his biography, I will rather let the voice of unpretending 
affection be heard. Few but students, I suppose, are fa- 
miliar with the name of Matthew Roydon, or know that 
he was a writer of some distinction. Perhaps it was love 
for Sidney which inspired him with the musical but un- 
equal poem from which I select three stanzas : 

"Within these woods of-Arcady 

lie chief delight and pleasure took ; 
And on the mountain Partheny, 

Upon the crystal liquid brook, 
The Muses met him every day, 
That taught him sing, to write and say. 

" When he descended down the mount, 
His personage seemed most divine ; 



178 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

A thousand graces one might count 

Upon his lovely cheerful eyrie. 
To hear him speak, and sweetly smile, 
You were in Paradise the while. 

" A sweet attractive kind of grace ; 
A full assurance given by looks ; 
Continual comfort in a face ; 

The lineaments of Gospel books : 
I trow that countenance cannot lie, 
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye." 

Among* Spenser's works, incorporated in his Astrophel, 
occurs an elegy of languid but attractive sweetness, which 
the great poet ascribes to the Countess of Pembroke, sister 
by blood to Sidney, and sister of his soul. Internal evi- 
dence might lead to the opinion that this " doleful lay of 
Clorinda," as it is usually called, was not written by Lady 
Pembroke, but was composed for her by the author of the 
Faery Queen. Yet the style is certainly inferior to that 
of Spenser at its best, and critics of mark incline to accept 
it literally as her production. This shall serve me as an 
excuse for borrowing some of its verses : 

" What cruel hand of cursed foe unknown 

Hath cropped the stalk which bore so fair a flower ? 
Untimely cropped, before it well were grown, 

And clean defaced in untimely hour ! 
Great loss to all that ever him did see, 
Great loss to all, but greatest loss to me J 

" Break now your garlands, oh, ye shepherds' lasses, 
Since the fair flower which them adorned is gone ; 

The flower which them adorned is gone to ashes ; 
Never again let lass put garland on ; 

Instead of garland, wear sad cypress now, 

And bitter elder broken from the bough." 



viii.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 179 

The reiteration of phrases in these softly-falling stanzas 
recalls the plaining of thrush or blackbird in the dewy si- 
lence of May evenings. But at the close of her long des- 
cant, Urania changes to thoughts of the heaven whose 
light has been increased by the "fair and glittering rays" 
of Astrophel. Then her inspiration takes a loftier flight. 
Meditations are suggested which prelude to Lycidas and 
Adonais. A parallel, indeed, both of diction and idea be- 
tween this wilding flower of song and the magnificent 
double-rose of Shelley's threnody on Keats can be traced 
in the following four stanzas : — 

"But that immortal spirit, which was decked 

With all the dowries of celestial grace, 
By sovereign choice from the heavenly choirs select, 

And lineally derived from angel's race, 
Oh, what is now of it become, aread ! 
Ah me, can so divine a thing be dead ? 

" Ah no ! it is not dead, nor can it die, 

But lives for aye in blissful paradise, 
Where, like a new-born babe it soft doth lie, 

In beds of lilies wrapped in tender wise, 
And compassed all about with roses sweet 
And dainty violets from head to feet. 

" There lieth he in everlasting bliss, 

Sweet spirit, never fearing more to die ; 
Nor dreading harm from any foes of his, 

Nor fearing savage beasts' more cruelty : 
Whilst we here, wretches, wail his private lack, 
And with vain vows do often call him back. 

" But live thou there still, happy, happy spirit, 
And give us leave thee here thus to lament, 
Not thee that dost thy heaven's joy inherit, 
But our own selves that here in dole are drent. 



180 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, [chap. 

Thus do we weep and wail and wear our eves, 
Mourning in others our own miseries." 

One couplet by a nameless playwright upon the death of 
Sidney's aunt by marriage, the Lady Jane Grey, shall serve 
to end this chapter : 

" An innocent to die, what is it less 
But to add angels to heaven's happiness !" 



Epilogue. 

When we review the life of Sir Philip Sidney, it is certain 
that one thought will survive all other thoughts about him 
in our mind. This man, we shall say, was born to show 
the world what goes to the making of an English gentle- 
man. But he belonged to his age; and the age of Eliza- 
beth differed in many essential qualities from the age of 
Anne and from the age of Victoria. Sidney was the typi- 
cal English gentleman of the modern era at the moment of 
transition from the mediaeval period. He was the hero of 
our Renaissance. His nature combined chivalry and piety, 
courtly breeding and humane culture, statesmanship and 
loyalty, in what Wotton so well called " the very essence 
of congruity." Each of these elements may be found 
singly and more strikingly developed in other characters of 
his epoch. In him they were harmoniously mixed and 
fused as by some spiritual chemistry. In him they shone 
with a lustre peculiar to the " spacious times of great 
Elizabeth," with a grace and purity distinctive of his unique 
personality. To make this image charming — this image, 
not of king or prince or mighty noble, but of a perfect 
gentleman — the favour of illustrious lineage and the grave 



Yiii.] EPILOGUE. 181 

beauty of his presence contributed in no small measure. 
There was something Phoebean in his youthful dignity : 

" When he descended down the mount, 
His personage seemed most divine." 

Men of weight and learning were reminded by him of 
the golden antique past: "Providence seems to have sent 
him into the world to give the present age a specimen of 
the ancients." What the Athenians called KaXo^ayadia, 
that blending of physical and moral beauty and goodness 
in one pervasive virtue, distinguished him from the crowd 
of his countrymen, with whom goodness too often assumed 
an outer form of harshness and beauty leaned to effemi- 
nacy or insolence. He gave the present age a specimen of 
the ancients by the plasticity of his whole nature, the ex- 
act correspondence of spiritual and corporeal excellences, 
which among Greeks would have marked him out for 
sculpturesque idealisation. 

It was to his advantage that he held no office of impor- 
tance, commanded no great hereditary wealth, had done no 
deeds that brought him envy, had reached no station which 
committed him to rough collision with the world's brazen 
interests. Death, and the noble manner of his death, set 
seal to the charter of immortality which the expectation of 
contemporaries had already drafted. He was withdrawn 
from the contention of our earth, before time and opportu- 
nity proved or compromised his high position. Glorious- 
ly, he passed into the sphere of idealities ; and as an ideal, 
he is for ever living and for ever admirable. Herein too 
there was something Greek in his good fortune; something 
which assimilates him to the eternal youthfulness of Hel- 
las, and to the adolescent heroes of mythology. 

This should not divert our thoughts from the fact that 



182 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

Sidney was essentially an Elizabethan gentleman. His 
chivalry belonged to a period when knightly exercises were 
still in vogue, when bravery attired itself in pomp, when the 
Mort d' Arthur retained its fascination for youths of noble 
nurture. Those legends needed then no adaptations from 
a Laureate's golden quill to make them popular. Yet they 
were remote enough to touch the soul with poetry, of 
which the earlier and cruder associations had by time -been 
mellowed. Knight-errantry expressed itself in careers like 
that of Stukeley, in expeditions like those of Drake and 
Raleigh. Lancelot's and Tristram's love had passed through 
the crucible of the Italian poets. 

Sidney's piety was that of the Reformation, now at 
length accomplished and accepted in England after a se- 
vere struggle. Unsapped by criticism, undimmed by cen- 
turies of case and toleration, the Anglican faith acquired 
reality and earnestness from the gravity of the European 
situation. Spain threatened to enslave the world. The 
Catholic reaction was rolling spiritual darkness, like a cloud, 
northward, over nations wavering as yet between the old 
and the new creed. Four years before his birth Loyola 
founded the Company of Jesus. During his lifetime this 
Order invaded province after province, spreading like leav- 
en through populations on the verge of revolt against 
Rome. The Council of Trent began its sessions while he 
was in his cradle. Its work w T as finished, the final rupture 
of the Latin Church with Protestantism was accomplished, 
twenty-three years before his death at Zutphen. He grew 
to boyhood during Mary's reactionary reign. It is well to 
bear these dates in mind ; they prove how exactly Sidney's 
life corresponded with the first stage of renascent and bel- 
ligerent Catholicism. The perils of the time, brought fear- 
fully home to himself by his sojourn in Paris on the night 



viii.] EPILOGUE. 183 

of St. Bartholomew, deepened religious convictions which 
might otherwise have been but lightly held by him. Yet 
he was no Puritan. Protestantism in England had as yet 
hardly entered upon that phase of its development. It 
was still possible to be sincerely godly (as the Earl of Es- ' 
sex called him), without sacrificing the grace of life or the 
urbanities of culture. 

His education was in a true sense liberal. The new 
learning of the Italian Renaissance had recently taken root 
in England, and the methods of the humanists were being 
applied with enthusiasm in our public schools. Ancient 
literature, including the philosophers and historians of Ath- 
ens, formed the staple of a young man's intellectual train- 
ing. Yet no class at once so frivolous and pedantic, so 
servile and so vicious, as the Italian humanists, monopolised 
the art of teaching. Roger Ascham, the tutor of princes ; 
Sir John Cheke, at Cambridge; Camden, at Westminster; 
Thomas Ashton, at Shrewsbury, were men from whom 
nothing but sound learning and good morals could be im- 
bibed. England enjoyed the rare advantage of receiving 
both Renaissance and Reformation at the same epoch. 
The new learning came to our shores under the garb of 
Erasmus rather than Filelfo. It was penetrated with sober 
piety and enlightened philosophy instead of idle scepti- 
cism and academical rhetoric. Thus the foundations of 
Sidney's culture were broadly laid ; and he was enabled to 
build a substantial superstructure on them. No better 
companion of his early manhood could have been found 
than Languet, who combined the refinements of southern 
with the robust vigour of northern scholarship. The acqui- 
sition of French, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish led him to 
compare modern authors with the classics ; while his trav- 
els through Europe brought him acquainted with various 



184 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. 

manners and with the leading men of several parties. An 
education so complete and many-sided polished Sidney's 
excellent natural parts, until he shone the mirror of accom- 
plished gentlehood. He never forgot that, in his case, 
studies had to be pursued, not as an end in themselves, but 
as the means of fitting him for a public career. Diligent 
as he was in the pursuit of knowledge, he did not suffer 
himself to become a bookworm. Athletic exercises re- 
ceived as much of his attention as poetry or logic. Con- 
verse with men seemed to him more important than com- 
munion with authors in their printed works. In a word, he 
realised the ideal of Castiglione's courtier, and personified 
Plato's Enphues, in whom music was to balance gymnastic. 

His breeding was that of a Court which had assumed 
the polish of Italy and France, and with that polish some 
of their vices and affectations. Yet the Court of Elizabeth 
was, in the main, free from such corruption as disgraced 
that of the Valois, and from such crimes as shed i sinister 
light upon the society of Florence or Ferrara. It was purer 
and more manly than the Court of James I., and even that 
remained superior to the immoralities and effeminacies of 
southern capitals. The queen, with all her faults, main- 
tained a high standard among her servants. They repre- 
sented the aristocracy of a whole and puissant nation, 
united by common patriotism and inspired by enthusiasm 
for their sovereign. Conflicting religious sympathies and 
discordant political theories might divide them ; but in the 
hour of danger, they served their country alike, as was 
shown on the great day of the Spanish Armada. 

Loyalty, at that epoch, still retained the sense of person- 
al duty. The mediaeval conviction that national well-being 
depended on maintaining a hierarchy of classes, bound to- 
gether by reciprocal obligations and ascending privileges, 



viii.] EPILOGUE. 185 

and presided over by a monarch who claimed the allegiance 
of all, had not broken down in England. This loyalty, 
like Protestant piety, was braced by the peculiar dangers 
of the State, and by the special perils to which the life of 
a virgin queen was now exposed. It had little in common 
with decrepit affection for a dynasty, or with such homage 
as nobles paid their prince in the Italian despotisms. It 
was fed by the belief that the commonwealth demanded 
monarchy for its support. The Stuarts had not yet 
brought the name of loyalty into contempt ; and at the 
same time this virtue, losing its feudal rigidity, assumed 
something of romantic grace and poetic sentiment. Eng- 
land was personified by the lady on the throne. 

In his statesmanship, Sidney displayed the independent 
spirit of a well-born Englishman, controlled by loyalty as 
we have just described it. He was equally removed from 
servility to his sovereign, and from the underhand subtle- 
ties of a would-be Machiavelli. In serving the queen he 
sought to serve the State. His Epistle on the French 
Match, and his Defence of Sir Henry Sidney's Irish Ad- 
ministration, revealed a candour rare among Elizabeth's 
courtiers. With regard to England's policy in Europe, he 
declared for a bold, and possibly a too Quixotic interfer- 
ence in foreign affairs. Surveying the struggle between 
Catholicism and Protestantism, Spanish tyranny and na- 
tional liberties, he apprehended the situation as one of ex- 
treme gravity, and was by no means willing to temporise 
or trifle with it. In his young-eyed enthusiasm, so differ- 
ent from Burleigh's world-worn prudence, he desired that 
Elizabeth should place herself at the head of an alliance of 
the Reformed Powers. Mature experience of the home gov- 
ernment, however, reduced these expectations; and Sidney 
threw himself upon a romantic but well-weighed scheme 
9 



186 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [chap. tiii. 

of colonisation. In each case he recommended a great 
policy, defined in its object, and worthy of a powerful 
race, to the only people whom he thought capable of car- 
rying it out effectively. 

This kindly blending of many qualities, all of them Eng- 
lish, all of them characteristic of Elizabethan England, 
made Sir Philip Sidney the ideal of his generation, and for 
us the sweetest interpreter of its best aspirations. The 
essence of congruity, determining his private and his public 
conduct, in so many branches of active life, caused a loving 
nation to hail him as their Euphues. That he was not de- 
void of faults, faults of temper in his dealings with friends 
and servants, graver faults perhaps in his love for Stella, 
adds to the reality of his character. Shelley was hardly 
justified in calling him "Sublimely mild, a spirit without 
spot." During those last hours upon his death-bed at Arn- 
heim, he felt that much in his past life had been but vani- 
ty, that some things in it called for repentance. But the evil 
inseparable from humanity was conquered long before the 
end. Few spirits so blameless, few so thoroughly prepared 
to enter upon new spheres of activity and discipline, have 
left this earth. The multitudes who knew him personally, 
those who might have been jealous of him, and those who 
owed him gratitude, swelled one chorus in praise of his nat- 
ural goodness, his intellectual strength and moral beauty. 
We who study his biography, and dwell upon their testi- 
mony to his charm, derive from Sidney the noblest lesson 
bequeathed by Elizabethan to Victorian England. It is a 
lesson which can never lose its value for Greater Britain 
also, and for that confederated empire which shall, if fate 
defeat not the high aspirations of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
arise to be the grandest birth of future time. 

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